Josh announced to me. “You ever wonder how we got into Level Zero in the first place?”
I still hadn’t fully acknowledged that Level Zero existed. I shook my head. “I thought you just entered using the line things—the gates.”
Josh turned to me. The wind ruffled his close-cropped hair and dangled the string from his hoodie. “We enter through the gates. We open the gates, but the reason we’re able to do that is because of this place.”
I nodded just to keep him quiet.
Josh went on. “Haze found this place. Then he found us.”
Josh kicked a pebble on the road. It skittered across the other side. He stopped, eyed another pebble, and lined himself up with it.
He kicked the pebble with everything he had, a perfect, fluid moment of rage against the tiny rock. It flew across the road and into the narrow strip of grass beyond it. It stuttered to a halt near some plastic nets keeping a mound of dirt from falling into the water.
“Haze is responsible for everything we do,” Lena said. She looked straight at Josh.
“I also hate the guy,” Josh announced to the lake.
“You hate everyone.”
“Why do you guys keep calling him Haze?” I asked. “Doesn’t sound like a name a parent gives their kid.”
Josh smirked. He tilted his head. Lena flared her nostrils.
He walked ahead of us. Lena sneered. The expression came and went so fast I hardly saw it. “It’s a code-name. We all have them. Mine’s BBQ.”
“BBQ?” I asked.
“They don’t have to make sense.” Lena said.
The cold and the smell mounted as we neared the lake. My chest felt sore.
Maybe it was the view. The land stood high enough for me to look down into the water. About a hundred metres off, the light blue of the shallows suddenly plunged into a deep, dark grey. Lake Ontario went about two hundred and fifty metres deep at its lowest point. It looked a lot deeper from here.
“You bought a change of clothes right?” Lena asked.
“What?”
“Didn’t Josh mention it?”
Josh’s shoulders hunched.
The road entered a blotch of land with more grass, three trees, a weather-beaten park bench and a dark green garbage can with pink spray-paint scrawling a stylized ‘P’ on the side. Even though we’d been walking for only a few minutes, I already felt tired. I looked at the bench as Josh and Lena trudged up the road.
The next bit of road lifted us higher and higher into the wind. In the distance, waves sloshed against the rocks. It may have been my imagination, but the sky seemed darker the longer we walked.
Why did it smell so bad here? Like rotting fish.
We reached the utmost extension of the land strip. From here the road curved on, bending back to the main body of the park. Looking back, I could almost see the park entrance from here.
Josh and Lena walked to the very edge of the road. Below the road, a cliff plunged into the water. Rocks spilled against it to protect it from erosion.
There was something odd about the shape of the rocks at the very bottom, near the water. The rocks sort of fell apart from each other, and they curved in a strange way, almost as if—
“A cave?” I asked.
Lena nodded. Josh sat himself on the ground, and slowly removed his shoes. He placed them side by side on the side of the road. Lena kicked off her sandals.
“We’re going in?” I asked, meaning “you’re not getting me in there”.
“You’ll dry off inside,” Lena said. “It’s warm.”
“... Oh,” I said. “Cool then.”
I pried off my own shoes. Josh raised an eyebrow.
I tossed my shoes off, shrugged off my jacket, and rolled my jean cuffs up to my knees. This was just spelunking. Odd, but the type of oddness I breathed for Stranger Danger.
The cliff was made of flaky limestone. Worn grey rocks piled up around it. The rocks didn’t look sharp, but their skeins of slime looked slippery.
I grabbed the top of the cliff and tested my foot on the rocks. They stayed. I saw a clear path of rocks I could walk down to get to the cave.
I descended.
“Hey—what, wait!” Lena said. Josh swore. They followed after me. I was already halfway down the cliff face by the time they positioned themselves properly for climbing.
A wave crashed against the rocks. White foam slurred the shallow cave mouth. A spray of water dotted the back of my shirt and soaked through to my skin.
Josh and Lena were having some trouble on an unstable outcrop. Lena was trying to leverage her weight against a crag in the limestone beneath the rocks.
The rocks smelled like dirt and bloody tin. A thin green slime rubbed off of them and onto my hands. Out of nowhere, I remembered that caribou lived on slime up north.
I paused to bring a gooey hand to my nose. I sniffed. Disgusting.
“Slow down!” Lena shouted. “It’s slippery!”
I snuck my foot between two rocks and lowered myself further towards the water. I was almost level with the cave mouth.
During none of this did I remember the stalker man’s delusion. And I’d completely forgotten my worries about coincidentally going to a beach again—the same place mentioned in that stupid labyrinth story.
I came down a few more feet. My feet planted down on the rocks just above the water.
From here, the cave mouth looked large enough to admit a person if they crawled in on their knees. The mouth was half-filled with water, so that person would need to get pretty wet.
It was darker now. The clouds were a thick, dark grey that didn’t make sense for the afternoon.
I edged closer to the cave. Ice-water swelled up and licked my heels. I winced. The lake burned cold. When the water receded I couldn’t feel the soles of my feet.
My teeth chattered. I clamped my mouth shut and the tremors spread down my back.
“Are we going in?” I shouted up at Lena.
“Yeah.” Lena answered. She came down to my height.
“I’ll meet you inside!” Josh yelled from above. His feet stuttered on the rocks. A free hand pawed for a new handhold.
Lena sighed. “If my boobs get wet you’re not allowed to stare.”
“Understood,” I said.
“I’ll kick your ass.”
“Lena, I can get all the boobs I want on the internet,” I said. I was going to stare so much.
“Why don’t you go in first?”
I looked at the cave entrance.
It wasn’t so much a cave as a hole. An ugly hole. The rocks around it were draped with seaweed, plastic scraps, and flotillas of pine needles. The waves poured in and out of it, like steady breaths. When the water swelled in, I’d have just enough air to keep my head dry.
“The cold sucks,” Lena said. “But it’s not so bad once you get in.”
“I can see your nipples,” I said.
Lena’s foot rose. She was in a perfect position to kick my kidneys out. I hopped into the water.
Cold.
“Shit!” I screamed.
Cold.
“What is it?” Lena asked.
COLD.
“Fucking hell!” I screwed my eyes shut. Think of boobs. Think of boobs. Just think of boobs.
The water knocked all the warmth out of me. It pierced my clothes and turned my skin into numb, rubbery latex. I flexed my fingers; my tendons groaned like taught cables. My knuckles hurt like drilled teeth.
Boobs boobs boobs. What were some good words for boobs? Ta-tas, that was a good one.
“Into the cave!” Lena shouted.
In India they were mangoes.
I forced my eyes open and saw the cave. I was right outside of it, and the cavern mouth gaped over my head like a monster ready to bite down.
Tits, it had a nice, vernacular aspiration to it.
I grabbed at the entrance and slipped. I tumbled farther into the water, up to my neck. I thrashed my arms to stay up but I co
uldn’t feel them moving.
Mandarin Chinese had bo-bo, pronounced like bwoh-bwoh. Also man tou—meaning bread buns.
I gritted my teeth.
I kicked myself forward. I grabbed at the hole and stuck this time. The water ebbed out and grimy, gritty crap washed across my neck. It stank like blood and vomit.
I pulled myself further into the entrance. My knees knocked against the rocks. The ceiling snagged strands of my hair.
The walls of the hole hugged all sides of me. I breathed in and my chest strained against stone. The air tasted metal. I couldn’t see anything ahead of me—I was blocking out all the light.
I felt around. The water sloshed around my shoulders. My hands stumbled through the water. Couldn’t feel any rocks. I bent forward.
Gravity lurched. My face hit water. I recoiled. Hit my head on the ceiling.
A foot away, the floor fell away to nothing.
“You’ve got to turn around,” Lena said. “On your back.”
“What?” I asked. I did turn onto my back just to hear her better. It was hard in the tiny space, but when I did, my stomach flattened out and let fresh air and light into the channel. I saw Lena’s head silhouetted at the mouth of the hole.
“And now you have to go down,” Lena said. “When you hit the bottom pull yourself up the other side. You have to be facing up or otherwise you won’t be able to bend.
“Excuse me?”
Lena explained as the water sloshed around my ears.
The depth below was a tunnel. It went straight down for about two metres, and then rose into a shallow cave on the other side. The tunnel was narrow, and the sharp curve below made it impossible to reach the cave by going down on your belly.
My nipples chafed against my shirt as I listened. My neck strained to keep my head up.
“You want me to go down there?” I asked her.
“Yeah. Don’t hit your head.” Lena said.
I fought to keep my head above the water. Cold water gulped my clothes. It was in my underwear and I was pretty sure my dick had imploded.
I groped behind me and felt down. The tunnel walls did indeed drop down, but I couldn’t feel a bottom. It was narrow. Narrow enough that I wouldn’t be able to come back up if there was just a dead end.
“It’s easy once you get the hang of it.” Lena said.
If I didn’t get the hang of it I’d die.
Oh well.
I lifted my butt and angled my back on the drop. A vertebrae wailed in the small of my back.
The water splashed as I positioned myself for the plunge. I braced both arms at the start of the drop.
Cold water went all the way down.
“Feel ahead with your hands, then when you feel the curve, pull up.” Lena said. “Uh, you’re sure you’re okay with this?”
I kicked off.
The water crashed into my ears. I jammed my eyes shut. Pulled myself down.
Cold shocked my face. Water jabbed inside my nose. I wanted to cough it out. Couldn’t cough it out.
I scrambled further down. I felt my upturned feet sink below the water.
I slid along the tunnel. My shirt snagged a rock. I resisted the urge to panic it off. If I thrashed down here I’d lose air.
I hit the bottom of the tunnel. I felt it. My lungs burned. My head ached.
Where was the curve?
My air was draining fast. My stomach contracted. My diaphragm shuddered. I coughed out a bubble. I felt cold water on my lips.
I felt around some more. My head scraped the back of the tunnel.
Where was the curve Lena told me about?
I thrashed around blind. My universe shrank to the size of my body. Pain points lit up like fires, the slow, withering burn in my gut, the inferno in my throat, the hard, sharp thunderclaps in my head and the tiny sparks in my chest as I whipped my arms inside the hole.
My hands snagged the roof of something. I pulled.
My nose ground against rock. I kicked, shuddered, and swallowed a scream. More bubbles spewed out my nose. I kicked kicked kicked. My balance went off.
And I gasped.
Air.
Coughed.
Wonderful air.
Wheezed.
I couldn’t see anything here either, but I didn’t need to. I could breathe.
I waded around. The water still reached up to my chest, but the ground turned up in a gentle slope. The slope was made of sand and gravel. I crawled up it and felt sediments slide into the water.
About two steps out, my head bumped against rock. I put my hands out and felt empty space.
The ground continued up. I got down and crawled until the slope evened out.
I came to dry rock. It was close enough to the ceiling to make sitting impossible. I could walk on my hands and knees at least. It was dry, and not cold.
I heard a splash of water and a gasp behind me.
“You made it?” Lena asked. “You okay?” She sneezed.
“Yeah.” I said.
“Good.” Lena coughed a big, hacking cough. “Fuck. I hate coming down here. Usually we just get Josh to do it.”
Water slopped around in the darkness. Gravel shifted. I felt Lena crawl alongside me.
“Josh should be here soon,” she murmured.
“What’s this for?” I asked.
Wet clothes scuffed on dry rock. Something kicked my knee.
“We’re going to teach you how to open gates to Level Zero,” Lena said. “Then when we get out Haze will tell you how to get rid of the stalker man. After that, well... We—”
More silence. I heard breathing.
A splash came from behind us. Josh gasped, and then implied that the cave’s mother was a prostitute.
“You guys there?” He called. He sounded different now. Bigger somehow.
We answered back, and he waded over to us.
“Christ,” he muttered. “Okay. Sam, that you?”
“That’s me,” Lena said.
“Okay.” Josh answered.
A hand slapped my knee.
“That’s me.” I answered.
“Good.” Josh sat down on the sand and the dirt growled beneath him. I felt his shoulder push against mine. My other shoulder ground up against the cave wall.
He sighed. “So notice anything about the temperature?”
Lena didn’t answer. I guessed it was a test for me. I couldn’t think of anything.
“Notice how you’re not shivering?” Josh asked. “That water must be about two degrees and we’re fine right now.
“Comparatively fine,” I admitted. I’d be happy about the temperature when my penis wasn’t AWOL.
“I don’t know how this place works,” Josh said. “Haze says he does but he’s an idiot.”
Josh droned on. God he loved to talk. “The reason we can walk on air is because when you enter and exit Level Zero, the ‘tags’ or attributes that your body has like gravity, size, and density, don’t work right. You remember the rooftop last week?”
I’d die remembering the rooftop, and the slow crawl along the horizon.
“Well with the right technique we could’ve just walked straight across the air. We didn’t though because people would’ve seen us and you would’ve gone all screamy on us.”
I snorted. Josh continued.
“I can explain all of the bugs,” Josh said. “They make sense from a physics perspective. At least what they think about gluons and everything over at CERN. I’m going to skullfuck the physics world; the stuff I’ve learned from Level Zero will give us cheap power, instant computing maybe immortality at no cost. Level Zero is going to save the world.”
“If I can figure out how this cave works.” Josh muttered.
I blinked. The total darkness was tricking my vision. Clouds of green, yellow and blue fire exploded on the ceiling. I breathed in and the colours melted into each other.
“This cave is sort of like a focal point,” Josh droned on.
His voice rumbled in the cav
e, picking up weird vibrations with the imperfections in the stone.
“Maybe because—well whatever. The point is, if there’s any proof that Level Zero is real, and that there are laws surrounding it, it’s here.”
“This is the alpha gate—the first gate. The one true way into Level Zero.”
I felt above my head. The ceiling was smooth, like pavement. I remembered Lena saying something about the islands being artificial. Was the island above built on concrete?
And what would happen if the concrete fell?
The rock beneath me felt warm now. My palms tightened against it and my fingernails made light scratches on it.
I couldn’t hear my breathing. I couldn’t hear anyone.
I blinked some more and the colours shifted.
“Just relax.” Lena said from far away. Like lamplight in the fog, her words came out small, blurred and impossibly lonely. “Haze says it’s all about your conscious state. Imagine that you’re breathing yourself out.”
“Haze is retarded,” Josh interrupted, leaving out an unspoken “and so are you.” His voice sounded closer, but still distant. “This gate is a natural law. It’ll work whatever you do.”
The colours in my eyes merged and sank and bloomed again. My lungs strained to pull oxygen out the thick air. In a sudden flash, purple dots popped across my vision, like the violets in Level Zero.
Level Zero was its own place. It was its own ecosystem with its own life cycle. And although it started as a dark hall of endless rooms, it had life.
My head felt full of cotton now.
I wondered, if a Stalker Man could control my actions, it could control others. And if its delusions didn’t work on me anymore, if I was too smart to fall for them again, then couldn’t it trick a few people I trusted? Couldn’t it convince three people to go to a cavern no one knew about and to suffocate as they quietly used up their air?
Wouldn’t it be a good trick?
The cavern groaned.
“... That’s not supposed to happen.” Josh said.
A vibration start in the rock, a buzz like the oscillations of a hummingbird wing. My head hurt from contact with the rock. I tried to lift it but it was so heavy now. I tried to move my hand, but it weighed a hundred pounds.
The hummingbird became a sparrow. My head rattled on the floor. My body shook and all I could see was bursts of light in a dark cave.
And then the vibrations became like no living creature. Great, gigantic thumps that slapped the earth.
Rock squealed. Momentum rushed through my chest and I, blind, wondered what it meant. The sound built, and behind it the earth knocked a steady, growing beat.