I stepped over the line of glass. The hallway branched off here into a kitchen and a living room.
The kitchen was smashed up: broken cupboards, cracked island, and a black stain that looked like ash. Against all reason someone had lit a campfire here long ago. The living room was empty: pilfered of anything useful. The window in the living room was cracked open. Warm air wafted through it.
I saw a door in the living room. Wary for broken glass, exposed nails, or bare wiring, I stalked across the carpet.
The carpet beneath the door had an arc drawn across it in dust. Someone had been here recently.
I turned the doorknob slowly. There wasn't any dust on it. The bolt unlocked inside, and I tugged the door open.
It revealed a narrow stairwell leading down After the third step, the stairway vanished into darkness.
Cold air floated from up the stairs.
I felt for a switch on the walls but couldn't find anything. I gave up and descended into the dark.
The air smelled cold and dank here, as if it was the source of some rot. After the heat from outside, the temperature felt unnatural.
There was a light down there...
I eased my way down the stairs. Nothing came after me; Haze didn't jump out with a gun like a B-Movie villain. I got the feeling that if anything came to scare me here, it'd be the more subtle kind of scary.
Just a feeling.
I came to the end of the staircase. I felt at the bottom, and broken glass tinkled. So, there was more. I swept it away with my foot, creating more noise than I wanted to make in this quiet place.
And stepped onto the floor.
The floor felt like rock. My fingers brushed the walls and they felt like unfinished drywall. I finally found a switch and flicked it on.
The lights came on.
I remembered this room.
I stepped forward. Grass crunched beneath my feet.
This basement was small, dirty and unfinished. Orange spray-paint marked the walls, and a yellow futon with the stuffing coming out extended from the wall. Cobwebs waved from the wooden rafters.
There was a stained coffee table with a lime-green Gameboy Colour. A pile of magazines sprawled underneath the table.
Red light flared from the wall, near the head of the futon. I blinked, but wasn't really surprised.
The red gate.
I'd been here two days ago, after awakening from the stalker man's bad dream.
What did this mean?
I sat on the sofa, surveying the gate for any changes or irregularities. I didn't notice any. I was probably too stupid to tell.
The red gate broke several rules: it appeared by itself, without a knife imbued with the alpha-gate's awesome sauce. It didn't flicker off, like other gates did. It didn't hum, like other gates did.
A gust blew through the house upstairs. Wood creaked. Something crashed to the floor. Maybe some raccoons had snuck inside. I didn't pay attention.
The colour of the gate was the most disturbing thing of all. The carmine glow was tuned too close to blood. The regular gates and their sterile blue were comforting compared to this.
What was wrong with these gates that they'd turned red?
I bunched my shirt for warmth and wished I'd brought a sweater.
Maybe the problem wasn't the gate.
Maybe, since the stalker man had sent me to Level Zero, I was just seeing things differently.
Another porcelain crack came from upstairs. But there wasn't any wind now.
I wondered suddenly why the front door had been unlocked.
“Thought you'd come back here.”
#
Haze.
He stood at the edge of the light. His right hand held a flashlight. His left hand grasped a fucking butterfly knife.
A butterfly knife is a type of folding knife native to the Philippines. The blade is normally lodged between two pieces of wood that can be pulled apart. The wood becomes the handle and the blade becomes the thing you kill things with. Butterfly knives aren't made to be concealed like pocket knives or switchblades. They're full-on combat gear.
Haze's weapon was the length of a steak-knife. The grey steel was flecked with brown rust. But even though it didn't look well-kept, it looked sharp enough to kill something.
The old man looked tired now. His beard was dirtier. His flat-ironed hair ran into knots. He'd lost weight; sharp edges protruded out of his pudgy face. He looked like he hadn't eaten since I saw him two weeks ago.
“Daniel,” I said. My voice came out smooth and level. Fear was taking over. It was leaching out my feelings, turning the world into smooth angles and trajectories. I started gauging Haze's reach, the force it would take to pierce my skin and whether or not an associate philosophy professor could generate that force.
“Shut up,” Haze said. He waved the butterfly knife. It was a stupid gesture but the knife was sharp enough to make it scary.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “I came to talk to you. Where is everyone?”
Haze curled his lips. The knife trembled in his hand.
“What's with these red gates?” I asked.
Haze turned on the flashlight. Bright yellow light blasted out of it. He held the flashlight level at the red gate.
“It looks blue to me,” Haze announced. “So do your eyes.”
“What?”
“They're glowing like Christmas lights,” he observed.
That wasn't true.
Haze entered the light. The flashlight stayed level with the gate. What was he doing with that?
“You killed Josh,” Haze said.
“Not my choice,” I said.
“I know,” Haze said. His fingers whitened on the knife handle.
Needed a weapon. Needed a way to block the knife, hurt Haze, and get out. If he swung I smack it aside and smash his knees.
“I.” Haze tensed. His knees locked into a sprinter's bent. His shoulders stiffened. “Know!”
Haze darted past me. The knife went up and I thought he'd stab me. He tackled me instead. His shoulder caught me in the solar plexus and drove the air out of my chest. Something crunched inside me.
I flew back onto the sofa. The edge of it dug into my kidneys. My head flew back.
Haze charged at the gate. He vanished through it.
I rolled onto the floor, doubled over. I choked on the pain. I closed my eyes and stars wheeled beneath my eyelids.
Pain roiled through my gut. My heart felt full to bursting. My stomach heaved and I gulped down. I got shakily to my feet.
Whatever Haze was doing, I needed to find out.
I lurched into the gate.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: STALKER MAN
“AAGH!”
The scream came so fast I thought it was mine. But then my feet touched down on the smooth floors of Level Zero, and I realized it was Haze's voice.
“Haze?” I shouted. My voice blared surround-sound out of every corner.
Haze screamed again. I heard it like I'd heard my own voice; it raked the empty rooms of Level Zero, gurgling and wheezing and fading out. It was noise without a purpose, no hope, no meaning, just a cry. It sent a chill inside my gut.
I looked around: Level Zero was normal today; three lights like fireflies chased each other in the corner of this room. Their lights lapped like waves at the empty doorways, leading forever into endless repetition.
I waited for a voice, a scream, even the rumble of a stalker man, but nothing came. I cocked my head. I smelled the fried-tin air. Nothing told me where Haze was.
The gate glowed supernova red behind me.
I leaned out the leftmost doorway. The room it led to was dark—no floating lights, no gates.
I wondered, if I got lost here, what would happen?
I didn't care at the moment. I was too pissed off that my investigation had landed me again in Level Zero.
I looked out the middle doorway. Still nothing. I might have no choice but to go back anyway, that or wander indefini
tely in the gloom. And Haze said my eyes were glowing—so I'd look just like a stalker man, from a distance.
Doors number one and two were empty. I checked doorway number three.
The room it led to was blank as well.
Wait.
Something like rusty neon flickered in the middle of this room.
I walked towards it and the gate's red glow dimmed behind me. This light didn't look normal. It didn't fly. It didn't move. It wasn't a neat, geometric shape either, it was a crescent smear on the ground.
It looked a bit like a liquid, glowing under blacklight.
I touched the smear. It came off on my finger and painted the ridges of my skin in light.
It smelled like copper.
#
“I don't believe it,” I said.
Endless hallways, filled with light.
“Dan never believes you,” Arnold joked to Gary.
Black walls the temperature of blood. Energy humming beneath my feet.
“Asshole,” I muttered.
No people. No noise.
Just me.
“Are you okay Daniel?” Gary asked.
For the first time since they'd taken me through the Alpha Gate, I looked back at Gary, Arnold and Terry.
Terry and Arnold reclined against the walls, trying to be cool in a place antithetical to everything we'd been taught. Around their waists looped velcro belts loaded with food, water and flashlights. They wore survival gear, as if this place was dangerous. I wondered briefly why Gary had shown this place to them first. They obviously didn't understand what this was.
It didn't matter. He'd shown me now.
Gary Weiss stood apart from all of us, lit from behind by a flurry of yellow lights that swarmed us fireflies. He was dressed in his business-casual alone seemed to know what we stood in. He knew this place was sacred.
“It's beautiful.” I whispered.
#
I struggled to retain the sounds and images, already sinking from my consciousness. But the false memory was fading like a dream.
That was Haze's memory. When he'd first been taken to Level Zero.
I rubbed my fingers together and the glowing liquid painted the lines of my fingers. It was blood. Haze had probably cut himself with his knife, or maybe I'd broken something when I elbowed his nose.
“What are you doing here Haze?” I asked myself. Once again, my voice sounded different now, coming from all directions and all the doorways. I had a brief vision of four clones of me, standing at the four doorways, repeating everything I said in unision. Of course that was stupid, there was only one of me.
But people were all so interchangeable anyway...
I wiped the blood on my pants where it glowed neon. I stared at the puddle in the middle of the room for a while.
I got an idea of how to find Haze.
I scooped up the rest of the blood. I cringed a bit; it was sticky, and lukewarm like the walls of Level Zero. Hopefully handling the blood would be the worst part, and Haze didn't have any diseases that I could somehow get from using his blood as paint.
I dabbed the middle of the room with a thumprint. It glowed oil-spill light, subtly, gently changing from red to purple to sickening green.
I headed down the rooms. I marked the middle of each one with a glowing thumbprint. This way I could keep track of where I went.
At first I moved in circles around the room I found the blood in. The pattern was similar to how I'd moved when I first came to Level Zero.
After I completed three circles around the blood-room, I found something.
A fleck of blood.
It was just a spot near the doorway, shining first highlighter-yellow then turning to a dark, rotten orange. It balanced against gravity into a perfect sphere. The imperfection on Level Zero's perfect smoothness was a bit jarring.
I reached out.
#
“What the hell is that?” Arnold screamed.
“Relax,” I said. “It's a stalker man.”
The blue lights wavered down the long hallway. I held my breath.
Arnold stood silently next to me. I crouched down. My skin flashed hot and cold. My lungs burned. I couldn't breath if I wanted to.
They blinked, turned, and continued on.
Thank God. I breathed out.
“That was close.” I said.
“Dan will you please fill me in on what the hell that was?” Arnold whispered.
“It's a stalker man,” I repeated, uncomfortable of the half-truth. “They... they live down here.”
“What?” Arnold asked.
“Yep,” I said. He had to believe it. The truth was too strange, and I could fix this before it spread.
I could definitely save Gary.
#
I bit my cheek. The pain forced me back into the present time and my present self.
Another vision of a past that didn't belong to me. But I had to remember this time. I had to remember.
Lies. Death. Something slinking through the rooms of Level Zero. What was Level Zero and why did it have these stalker men? Junk data? What a load of crap—the world wasn't a computer program, at least not how Josh thought it was.
But my thoughts faded into the background and dried up to nothing.
I dabbed at the drop of blood.
I walked in a new set of circles that spiralled around the second blood-room. It took me five repetitions to find a new room that had Haze's glowing blood inside it. The blood was three streaks smudged along the wall, like Haze had propped himself up there.
I hadn't heard anything else from Haze.
I touched the new streaks of blood, and when the vision came I was ready for them.
#
“You'll need to be careful,” I said.
Lena and Amrith strapped the belts on. Flashlights, food, water. The gear was more for their psychological well-being than anything else; Level Zero didn't make you hungry, technically you didn't even breath the air inside it.
“Shouldn't be a problem,” Amrith said. “You showed us everything.”
“We have the cloaking rings,” Lena said. She smiled and flicked the gold rings dangling from her ear.
I sat cross-legged in front of the gate. It was the first stable one I'd opened since the dreams started.
The gate glowed up the wall of my basement. I'd developed a way to seal the gates from inside Level Zero. It would keep out unwanted visitors, and let me do my research in peace.
Laurent and Josh bent over a thin black netbook at the corner of the room. Laurent had hooked something up to monitor wireless communications inside Level Zero. Amrith and Lena both carried walkie-talkies on their belts.
They didn't carry markers, tape, or anything that could reveal their location. I was pretty sure that the stalker men could read information from anything we left behind there.
Josh and Laurent had led me to Lena and Amrith: I was worried about them. They were fast, they'd been doing backflips off a wall when Laurent introduced them to me at the Ryerson cafeteria. But they needed to be careful.
I looked over at Josh and Laurent, still kneeling over the laptop, talking technology to each other. It was a good choice to get them in on this. I had my misgivings about using people, but I had to use these kids to map Level Zero. Otherwise it'd keep on spreading.
“Time to go in,” Laurent announced. Amrith and Lena looked at each other nervously. Lena grinned.
My stomach tightened.
I wasn't afraid of Arnold or Terry. All they could do was run and look creepy.
But Gary was still down there.
#
The vision faded. I wrestled in my mind to keep it; aside from the vision itself, there was subtext there—background date not stated but known.
Haze knew what Level Zero was.
And I now thought that the stalker men were anything but natural.
“No...”
My ears pricked. Haze's voice again. It gurgled out the walls, sickeningly low.
There was a tone to Haze's voice that I couldn't place, like he'd lost a battle he'd fought for ages, or like he'd dropped halfway through a long, long road. It was a type of despair tempered by time and hope and determination, wrapped in what could have been.
I made more circles around that room.
What was Level Zero?
This was what Haze thought:
Level Zero wasn't a place. It was a thing. a living alien operating out of a different level of existence than ours. It was a creature that slunk in a strange, formless void. Its tendrils gripped below into the world of space and matter, but also reached above and between.
It lived between time, and the world of force and projection. It was an abomination of physics: the one true glitch that spat in the rules and lived in the world between abstraction and material. It was this that let the Level Zero crowd use their crazy powers.
But for all of its strangeness, Level Zero was alive. Living things hungered. And the stalker men were how it ate.
I did another circle. I found another drop of blood a few rooms down. I touched the blood and raw information went like an electric shock directly to my brain.
Haze had tried to destroy Level Zero.
He'd convinced Lena, Laurent, Amrith and Josh that it could be something fun. He'd used Josh's greed and Laurent's curiosity and Amrith and Lena's aimless, nerdy sense of play. He'd tried to use them to map Level Zero and find the mythical Alias to cure the stalker men and kill Level Zero.
The data streaming through my head clouded my vision. My head whirled. My skin prickled. A jolt ran up my back and a single, clear image rose from the blood.
It was of myself, with glowing blue eyes, standing in Haze's basement.
I'd come for him. I'd come for all of them but only Haze had escaped.
“No... Please stop.”
The voice was a murmur. Unlike before, it was quiet, and I could tell it came from a few rooms away.
I took a left into the next room, turned, and stopped.
Three rooms down, surrounded by a ring of red lights, Haze knelt, streaked with psychedelic blood.
I came closer.
Laurent, Lena and Amrith stood over Haze. Their eyes glowed red, so red it was like their bodies were filled with light. Their eyes washed out the shadows of their faces, bleaching their features uniform. Their skin looked pale in the new light, and drawn back.
I slowly entered the room.
“Going to make me one of them?” He asked.