Sam touched one of the bodies, lifted it so that rows of bars and stripes showed on its chest.

“I wonder if one of them could have gotten us into the file room,” he said, fishing the plugs out of his ears.

Dean rummaged through the men's pockets, unearthing a motley of ID badges with code names---Orange Crush, Dirty Rider, Pink Satin---until he came upon one with a key ring the size of a grapefruit. He wondered how much of his brand of humor had spread through the department. He wondered if he had a cool code name too. "Here," he said, tossing Sam the key ring, "The really important ones are usually magnetized, see if you can find---"

Crack. The lights went out. Somewhere an engine whined and a small red dot appeared on the wall nearest the door they'd just blocked, slowly turning orange and then yellow and then traveling down in a white vertical line. The monitors flickered to life behind them, Bowie's mismatched eyes filling all twelve screens at once.

"Hello...Mister Winchesters...A Class-A personnel breach has been reported...Please stand by for Emergency Order 292 Disciplinary Action."

A rectangle glowed in the wall and clattered to the floor, the four-armed bot from the video skittering inside and vanishing into a corner.

Bowie continued. "Records forbid the termination of any mobile task force units...But as your action constitutes a national threat, you will be neutralized...until further notice from High Command."

Two steel pincers lifted Dean off the floor, the other two stretching several feet to pin Sam against a wall.

"Have...a nice day...Mister Winchester."

The screens fizzled out to snow. Dean sneered at the bot holding him by the biceps. "Come on if you're hard enough."

The bot's head swiveled to Dean. "Is that...a joke?"

Sam held his breath, and for answer the bot held out Dean's left arm and wrenched it until Sam heard the pop of dislocation.

"Ha...ha."

Dean howled, tears in his eyes as the bot held him in place and let him kick the empty air. Unable to escape its steely grip, something stirred in Sam's memory, something Bowie had said earlier. Specialist: Occult Combat.

Sam closed his eyes and tried to ignore Dean’s pained noises, tried to ignore the metal pressing him against cold concrete. He buried himself in his mind, focusing on those strange words that had taken him deep into memory, focusing on the strong sense of deja vu he’d had since they stepped foot in their quarters, the sense of barely-repressed memories.

Grasping, clutching, straining, something finally snapped into place.

Heat, the sound of metal screeching on metal, and the sudden, stomach-dropping feeling of weightlessness. The elevator they were in was in free-fall, and they landed at the bottom of the shaft with a deafening crash. The doors crumpled under the impact.

Sam took a deep breath, concentrated, raised his arms, palms outward, and recited one of the scores of spells he’d painstakingly committed to memory. The battered doors vibrated and twanged. They bent themselves inward, leaving a space large enough for Sam and Dean to escape.

Sam opened his eyes. Dean was still struggling and cursing. Sam raised his hands toward the arms pinning him and recited the incantation, felt a cold burn in his chest and stomach and watched the metal warp and bend, huffed out a breath when he was dropped to the floor. He recited the spell again directly toward the bot this time, and blood dripped, then streamed out of his nose as the robot collapsed with metallic pings and clangs while smoke poured out of its joints. Dean fell to the concrete as the last arms crashed to the floor.

The bot tried to turn over, one claw grazing Dean's cheek. "404 system error...My arms...hardware parity malfunction, please notify...I can't feel my arms."

Sparks arced, the bot’s voice falling in pitch until it sounded like an old man, then stopped altogether. Dragging himself across the floor, Dean curled up against the wall beside Sam, breathing hard through his nose. "Damn. Damn. We almost got killed by a toaster oven. How...?"

He turned to Sam, relief and fear playing over his features, and turned back to the bot. It looked like an elephant had stomped on it. The first question was on the tip of his tongue, but Dean tucked it back for later and lifted the hem of his shirt with his good hand and spat on it and said, "You got blood on your mouth Sammy."

Sam held still and let Dean wipe the blood away, feeling a tightness in his forehead and sinuses and a thunderstorm of a headache forming behind his eyes. He hated the angle of Dean’s other shoulder and the way Dean’s face was pale with pain, a dark red cut welling up with blood along his cheekbone in stark contrast, but he knew Dean wouldn’t let him do anything about it until he was able to take care of Sam.

Finally, Dean stepped back, apparently satisfied. “It happens,” Sam said, the feel of blood clotting in his nose all too familiar. “Now we gotta fix your shoulder, then figure out what to do. Come here.”

Gingerly, Sam took hold of Dean’s arm, feeling the abnormal separation in the joint of the shoulder with his hand and not missing Dean’s wince. “Okay. On three. One… “

"NNNN okay," said Dean, rolling his shoulders, "I'm gonna feel that in the morning."

Dean turned to say thank you, the words still ringing long after Sam had said them, and for a moment there two Sams overlapped beside him. One clapped his shoulder and made concerned noises. The other was trapped with him in an elevator, scared he wouldn't be able to get past the soldiers with Dean's semi-conscious body. Smoke poured from under the elevator doors. The floor light dinged. Sam opened the doors with a thought, and draping Dean over his back and touching his fingers to his brother's bloodied mouth, Sam drew three lines across his face, his warpaint bending itself into an UnWord that saw the soldiers approach and reached out and stove in their skulls in puffs of red mist. More were coming, but Dean wasn't scared. It would take more than bullets to stop his Sammy.

Dean blinked, nodding to whatever present-day Sam had asked, and studied the key ring. "The file room can't be far...dang there's gotta be more than fifty keys on here."

He looked up at the monitors, as if the answer might be read in the snow. "The music, the code names, Ziggy Stardust's exoskeleton, we're all over this place like a bad rash. It knows us, but we've forgotten it. So what kind of key would unlock the basement at the bottom of the world?"

He flipped to one larger than most, and the boys looked at each other and said in unison, "A car key."

They stared at it for a few seconds. It was an old-fashioned one, plain metal without the plastic grip or buttons or beepers of a modern car key.

In the hall outside, they could hear the hum and clang of the big bot rolling along the corridor on its massive treads.

“We’ve still got to deal with Bowie,” Sam said, standing to help Dean to his feet. He swiped at his upper lip, nose filled with the smell of dried blood and head aching. “I think I’ve still got the juice. But whatever weapons he has aren’t going to be easy to dodge. Any ideas?”

Dean ran a hand over his mouth. "Okay, um..."

Casting about the room, he ran to the monitor station and ripped open a panel, fans whirring and lights flashing red and green within. "There's a crawlspace back here. It's hot, but it's good cover."

Sam was about to protest, but Dean said, "I'm gonna climb over the top of the door. I can buy you, maybe, five seconds, then you do your thing when I yell."

Sam nodded, framed against the constellation grid of blinking lights as Dean shut the panel and took off his boots and ran on silent feet.

For a while it seemed as though Bowie had changed direction, perhaps decided to recruit other bots for back-up. And then a familiar voice echoed down the passageway...

"Deeeeean honey."

Sam balled his fist into his mouth. Of course they would have gotten a hold on old phone calls from Lawrence...

"You're so quiet. Are you still there?"

The sound of metal scraping as Bowie widened the hole in the wall. Lasers swept the room.

"I brought you some pie."

CRASH. Mary's voice vanished, replaced by a high keening like a driver pressing the gas and brake pedals at the same time. Risking a look, Sam kicked open the panel and rushed out.

Holding fast to a pipe he'd driven into Bowie's eye, Dean moved with it like a bull rider, one arm in the air and legs locked around the robot's neck while it whipped round the room to shake him off. Chairs smashed beneath its treads. One of the sprinklers popped off and they were doused in a cone of rain. Unable to train its sights or fire a plasma beam for fear of triggering an electromagnetic pulse at such close quarters, Bowie stretched itself to its full height and Dean disappeared in a cloud of ceiling plaster.

"Now Sammy!"

Sam’s hands shot out and he yelled the incantation, putting all of himself into it, headache exploding behind his eyes. Bowie imploded, crumpling like a can crushed by a huge invisible hand, sparks flying and arcing off metal surfaces. Dean dropped from the ceiling and rolled to the floor with a grunt that Sam could barely hear above the squeal of metal as Bowie continued to warp inward, its voice small as it said in Mary's voice, "Dean, help me."

Sam fell to one knee, feeling the blood gush from his nose again. His head throbbed like a rotten tooth. He wiped his face on his sleeve and pushed up to his feet, then rushed to Dean who was still being rained on by sparks.

Through the clouds of smoke, Sam could see Dean clutching his shoulder, trying to raise himself off the floor. He took Dean by his good arm and moved him away from the bot, who was still slowly being destroyed, gibberish words and bits of song being emitted in bursts and crackles from its speakers.

He led them toward the door, coughing. "Dean, are you okay?" he asked, his voice rough.

Dean nodded, buzzed from the fight. Water dripped down his heaving chest and soaked him through. "Yeah I'm good. Let's bolt before Optimus Prime here calls in the honor guard."

Leaning on each other for support, they made their way through the exit to an elevator that only went down and required a separate key for each floor and had little office party notices taped to the wall. HAPPY BIRTHDAY AGENT STICKY FINGERS, CAKE IN THE MAIN LOBBY at 21:00, D-CLASS WEAPONS PROHIBITED.

Dean shoved the car key into a slot the same size and dropped his head on Sam's shoulder and closed his eyes. Pearls of water clung to his lashes. "You hurt? You don’t look hurt."

The elevator hummed and began its slow descent into the earth. Dean opened his eyes, tired and grateful and a little bit scared of Sam's expanded vocabulary. Words were weapons. If a monster word could kill with a thought, what might the monsters do with human words, like 'city' or 'moon' or 'sky'? Or 'brother'?

Sam pressed his arm around his brother’s waist, snuffling, drying blood coating the back of his throat. He could see their blurred reflections in the metal doors of the elevator, slumped and clinging together, bedraggled and soaked. Red still streaked his face.

“I’ll be okay,” he said thickly, knowing that wasn’t a real answer. It would have to do. His vision was blurred, his head felt like it was going to split open, but having Dean this close to him helped. It always helped.

Chapter 5: How the Rockies Were Made

The elevator slowed, then came to a halt, hydraulics hissing. With another turn of the key, the doors slid open.

Sam let his arm slip away from Dean, and they stepped into a wide, high-ceilinged room. Something about it, about the heaviness of the air, the darkness in the corners, made it terribly apparent that they were deep under ground.

Computers lined the left and right walls, their screens dark, and actual file cabinets stretched across the back wall. The center of the floor was dominated by a large metal table encircled with aluminum folding chairs. Papers were scattered across its surface.

Sam took a quick glance at the papers, then sat himself at a computer and powered it up.

A blinking cursor appeared. LOGIN?

Sam entered his name and text scrolled past ending in C:/Users/SamWinchester/Dir>. Sam read through the directory and noted the most recent changes on three security files: 'Operation Heaven's Gate', 'Operation Mermaid', and a cryptic audio recording with a string of random numbers in the title.

He stared with dread at the audio file, then his mind hovered between the other two. Arbitrarily, he chose ‘Operation Mermaid.’

A video file appeared, a brief burst of static, and then it went to split screen. Night-vision cameras panned to show flat, grassy land littered with Army jeeps, and then in a disorienting spin the brothers could be seen facing each other.

Dean stood in the right half of the screen and Sam stood in the left, their faces ghostly, eyes glowing in the night vision. They wore headsets with cameras mounted at their temples. There was a narrow crack in the ground before them, and as Camera Sam looked to his right, Sam saw that the crack widened into a deep valley. Outlined by the pale moon, far away but approaching at an astounding speed, was an unbelievably huge, monstrous form, its tentacles writhing, its body blocking out the moon as it moved closer.

The video shook and a loud, otherwordly gurgling growl sounded through the speakers.

“Dean, you might want to watch this,” Sam said. Footsteps, then he felt Dean’s hand on his shoulder.

Camera Dean said, “Sammy, you ready?”

Through the speakers, Sam heard himself take a deep breath. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

“I’ll see you after this. If we get separated, we meet up at the cave, remember?” Dean said.

“Yeah. Don’t make me wait too long,” Camera Sam said, and Sam could hear the quiet fear in his voice.

Dean’s camera panned down, showing a small table holding a bowl, the contents indistinguishable in the dark. He sliced open his palm so that blood dribbled into the bowl and then lit a match, the sudden brightness whiting out his half of the screen. Sam’s voice came through the speakers then, strong and confident as he spoke words of power that tickled and throbbed in Sam’s memory, resonated all through him. His voice became louder. He was staring at Camera Dean, and Dean was staring back, fierce resolution on his face.

The speakers crackled as Sam’s voice deepened and seemed to double, a whisper dancing behind his normal voice. He spoke the incantation and the beast roared, and the cameras shook profoundly as the earth began to move.

Both cameras shuddered. Army jeeps teetered on the edge of the chasm and fell in. Geysers of lava shot up in the distance as Camera Dean glanced back and forth between Sam and the liquefying earth rising up before them in a mile-high wall of rock that stretched forever in either direction.

Camera Dean radioed in. "Denver is green light, how's Reno?"

Crackle. "Solid. You two got cover?"

"The caves aren't far."

Crackle. "We're getting some weird reports on your end, but tell Sam it's a go and then evacuate."

Camera Dean's brow knit at this vague piece of intel, but nodded and signed off, holding tight to his rifle as he looked to Sam. As he watched his baby brother slowly bring his upraised hands together, continental plates folding at his command with a horror sandwiched in between.

Lever-legged fish men rushed to stop them, but Dean raised his gun and punched holes in their heads while keeping his eye on Sam. An inhuman wail pierced the night, and Sam's side of the screen flipped ninety degrees, blades of grass bending in the wind.

"Sam!" Camera Dean shouted, hurrying over, "We gotta move, can you walk---"

Camera Dean looked up at a klaxon alarm, thinking perhaps the monster was lobbing comets again. Then the first mushroom cloud bloomed over downtown Denver, the jet wheeling round for another strike as smoke spread in a fast-expanding ring and then sucked all the debris back toward the center. Anyone inside would have been turned to human salsa.

Stricken, Camera Dean returned his attention to Sam. "Can you hear me?!"

“Yeah, I… Dean… “

In a confusing jumble of video images, Dean helped Sam to his feet. Sam’s face came into focus, blood smeared under his nose and leaking from his ears.

“Sammy?”

Camera Sam wiped at a trickle of blood below his ear, his eyes dazed. “I can walk,” he said, though he didn’t sound so sure. “Did we do it?”

Dean’s camera panned to the side, moving upward to survey the high, jagged peak of the new mountains Sam had formed, and Sam’s camera followed, shaky.

“Yeah, we did it, Sammy. Let’s go.”

A Jeep came into view on both sides of the shuddering split screen, the ground surrounding it littered with the corpses of fish men, and then the feed shut off, leaving a blank window on the monitor.

In the file room, Sam huffed out a breath. “Jesus,” he breathed. “We killed Cthulhu. We made… a mountain.”

Chapter 6: The White House and Other Sacred Spaces

Dean turned one of the papers with his fingertips, a map of America with Xs suturing the west and curving toward Mexico. "I think you made more than one," he said, the after-image of Sam's re-shaping the earth still fresh in his mind, "But why make everyone forget? I mean, okay, crowd control for the civilians, but why us as well?"

Dean put a hand on Sam's shoulder, leaning over to squint at the computer. "What's 'Heaven's Gate'?"

Sam opened the file, and a grainy security video showed four individuals in a sumptuous office with heavy gold curtains and a bald eagle on the carpet---George W. Bush by the bar, Dick Cheney in a wheelchair, Sarah Palin behind the desk, and a well-dressed older man with his back to the camera. The other three stared at him like they might puke on their shoes.

"Sign it!" the old man barked, and Palin jumped, eyes unfocused on the document before her. Bush filled a glass with something expensive, downed the whole thing in one go, then went for seconds.

Cheney was the first to speak. "What kind of numbers are we talking about?"

"If this thing gets loose? You're all toast. You follow the plan? You might slide with a few million casualties." said the old man.

Palin's eyes watered. "This isn't real...oh why did it have to be me..."

The old man's hands slapped the table and she snapped to attention. "You've seen this coming!"

"He's right Sarah," said Cheney, wheelchair turning, "CIA's been all over this for a while. Army's got underground computer banks storing the memories and genetic data of millions of U.S. citizens for the purposes of cloning and memory modification, in case of a planetary extinction event. We even got robots for civic reconstruction, fixing up the roads and buildings. Someone dies, we grow a copy, program it to think they survived a natural disaster instead of Godzilla's evil stepmother, and no one's the wiser."

Bush set down his drink, hand trembling. "Dear lord, how can we trust our own minds? How do we know this hasn't happened to us before?!"

Cheney gave him a small enigmatic smile. "You ask that every time."

Palin sniffed hard. "I won't sign it."

The old man grabbed her by the hair and bounced her head off the desk for emphasis. "You will sign it. You will do this. I got you elected, I make the decisions around here, and no way is some punk...stealing...my...apocalypse!"

She grabbed his wrist, manicured nails digging in until she drew blood. "Go screw yourself."

BANG. Her brains splattered across the bald eagle, and Bush stood there with smoke coiling from the barrel of a gun. "I-I-I exercise the right of a-a-article II, Section 1, Clause 5 and, oh lord," he paused to vomit up his martini and wiped his mouth, "Somebody get me a damn pen."

The old man clapped him on the shoulder, now turned in profile to the camera.

"I assure you, Mister President," said Zachariah, "You're doing the right thing."

The video ended.

Sam was speechless for a moment, shock layering upon shock. In his head, things fell rapidly into place.

Who would have the power to do this? they’d wondered.

Angels.

“They wiped… the entire country’s memories,” he said slowly. “Just so they could have their own apocalypse.”

Part 5