Lena said. “He’s going back under.”
#
I picked up my laptop. The sun-toasted plastic warmed my palms.
I chuckled, sat down on the rocks, and watched the waves on the shore of Lake Ontario.
The sun glowed a deep orange over the water. It reminded me of orange juice. Warm orange juice.
I leaned back. The rocks felt warm beneath me, and strangely comfortable. Stray bits of stone clung to my shirt.
“We have to leave him.”
Did warm orange juice taste good? Probably not. Mango juice then.
“We can’t.”
Yes, mango juice was tasty, I decided.
“Hit it again.”
#
I saw white, just white.
White turned grey. Grey turned to dingy parking garage.
“Finally.” Lena breathed. She stood up and kicked the floor with a brown leather boot. “Keep him up this time.”
I coughed. My mouth felt full of sour-tasting fluff.
“Okay, we’ve got him.” Amrith said. He looked over his shoulder to Josh. “How’s the gate?”
“Let. Me. Work,” Josh seethed from the wall. He held an earring—Lena’s earring—in one hand. The other hand pushed against a salt-stained concrete wall. Beside him, Laurent crouched with an aluminum baseball bat, held up like he was ready to hit a home run.
Here again? I didn’t want to be here.
“Crap.” Amrith looked down at me. He started going fuzzy. “NonoNO!”
#
The wipers squeaked on the glass. The tires stuttered as it traversed the drifts of snow.
The entire car shuddered as we hit a bump in the asphalt. We’d just entered the narrow bridge on Hurontario. The snow quietly intensified.
The bridge was long, utilitarian concrete. One of about four on this street that spanned the Credit River. The river ran south from Orangeville and emptied in Lake Ontario. Approaching this part of Mississauga, the river broke up into three, later converging back into a single stream. Over the centuries, the river had carved deep valleys where it ran. It was pretty, but damn inconvenient.
In the daylight, I could have seen the trees waving beneath the bridge. I could have seen the river, and the deer that sometimes crossed it. But tonight was dark: the concrete railings showed darkness, and snow. Nothing else.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Jon said.
Jonathan looked... normal. But then, what did I expect? Of course he looked normal, like Dad, except with lighter hair and four scars on his ear from his rebel teen earring phase.
For some reason, I couldn’t see his eyes; the shadows cut them off.
I stared too long. Jon noticed. He waggled his ears and crossed his eyes at me until I looked away. I felt better though. It was just the lighting after all: as soon as he’d lowered his head to mock me, I saw his face just fine.
“It feels like my fault,” I muttered. I looked down for my laptop, but it wasn’t there.
I didn’t own a laptop.
Jon scratched his chin. His stubble scritch-scritched against his thumb.
The passing streetlights drew closer and closer together as we entered Brampton. Neon signs flashed in the windows—a Jack Astor’s, a Boston Pizza, a bright green Chili Pepper for Thai Excite.
“Whew,” Jon said. “I thought we’d never get home.” His breath fogged as he spoke. Mine did too.
But the heater was on, full blast.
We passed through the downtown and swung into the suburbs. It got darker again: no cars out this late, and in this weather.
“You don’t have to be afraid.” Jon said.
I nodded, even though I didn’t understand him.
Jon entered our neighborhood. He turned down Squire street and took a left on Jackdaw.
I rarely saw our block covered in this much snow; it caked everything, leaving only slivers of black beneath the eaves of houses and the boughs of trees.
Our house appeared at the end of Orion Street—a white-brick bungalow with Spanish arches. A tasteless plastic angel stood next to the maple tree on our lawn. The angel, an Easter bunny, and a Frankenstein’s monster all shared the same spot in a choreographed holiday timeshare.
Jonathan pulled into the narrow driveway and stopped only when the car almost touched the garage door.
Jon turned off the car. The headlights died. The dashboard died. The quiet sounds of the engine and the motor died.
“Come on,” Jon said. His breath steamed around him. “Let’s get inside.”
I hugged my backpack to my chest.
The house looked odd; the lights were out inside. Something else was off: the exhaust from the furnace should have been steaming in this cold. It wasn’t right. The house didn’t just look empty. It looked dead.
Where Mom and Dad at a party? That might explain it. But then why did Jonathan have the only car?
Jon undid his seatbelt, kicked his door open, and got out. He bent back in to look at me.
“Coming?” He asked.
His eyes glowed bright blue.
Jon frowned. “Something wrong bud?”
“Last time or we leave. Okay?”
“Jon?” I asked. “... Didn’t you die?”
“Hit it!”
#
I gasped. My eyes flew open. Cold stone beneath my hands.
I saw Lena and Amrith sitting above me. Lena slapped me.
“Ow,” I shouted, more from shock than anything.
“Don’t do that again,” Lena said. She massaged the back of her hand and looked over to Amrith. She nodded. Amrith nodded back. He slapped me again.
“Ow!” I clutched my jaw. That one did hurt.
“You nearly died.” Amrith said. “A couple of times. You can’t go back to sleep.”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” I muttered into my hand.
“Come on, we’re still in trouble,” Lena said. She and Amrith grabbed my arms and pulled me to my feet. I tripped. They steadied me.
“We have to go!” Josh shouted. Next to him, a blue line glowed on the wall.
The room tilted left. My feet slipped. Amrith and Lena held me up.
“What’s wrong with this room?” I mumbled. A thousand tiny pains screamed at me from the small corners of my body. The junctures in my spine, the hollow of my back. I tasted vomit on my mouth.
Amrith and Lena pulled me down. I resisted. A sound like splitting rocks crashed from the ceiling. The ground snapped beneath me and I flew a foot into the air. I collided with the ground and they pulled me back to my feet.
“You’ve got to trust us!” Amrith shouted.
What’s going on?” I groaned.
“You don’t want to know,” Amrith shouted in my ear. He whipped around. “Josh?!”
“Done!” Josh said. A blue line of light stood in the wall in front of him. He stuffed something in the pocket of his hoody. “Come on!”
And then we were running. Lena and Amrith charged me at the line. It was glowing, brighter and brighter and...
CHAPTER SIX: ESCAPE
Dark, like cave mouths and bad dreams.
Warm, like a dead campfire.
The air smelled burnt, and greasy.
I groaned. A feeling of revulsion gurgled up from my stomach and made me shudder.
I felt Amrith’s and Lena’s hands on my shoulders and waist, but could not see them in the sudden darkness. I swatted them away. My balance lurched. My knees knocked together. I groped for something to hold on to.
I couldn’t hear—just murmurs beneath the squeal of tinnitus. I caught my breath, steadied myself, and let the lingering disgust pass through me. I swallowed. My ears popped, and I could hear again.
“—Isn’t going to—”
“Shut up.”
“You shut up.”
A flashlight clicked on and the voices stopped.
A circle of light wavered on a black floor. It shot up to a blue line glowing on a close, black wall.
Lauren
t passed through the beam, dragging his aluminum bat. He set up beside the blue line. He hitched the bat up to his shoulders, grabbed it both hands, and curled his fingers around the handle wrapped in fraying black tape.
He swung.
The bat smashed the wall with a home run tink. Blue sparks flew out from the line.
The blue line shuttered, stuttered, and blacked out. Another layer of darkness fell on top of the room. It was just the flashlight now.
I felt a hand grab my shoulder. I could tell it was Lena’s.
“Don’t relax,” her voice sounded off. Without visual markers, it seemed to come from far away. “Don’t fall asleep. If you feel strange tell us.”
“Also just so we’re clear we might perhaps have to kill you,” Amrith’s disembodied voice said. I think he was joking.
“Jesus Amrith.” Josh whispered. The joke got a lot less funny. From the sound, I could tell he held the flashlight.
A hiss filled the room. Red sparks and thick, viscous smoke flew up and cast the room in blood-tones. A road flare.
Laurent held the flare in his other hand. His eyes creased and he looked away from it. His mouth puckered like he’d eaten something spicy. He tossed the flare into the corner. Our shadows reeled around it.
I could see everyone now, standing in the bloody light. We stood in a room, about ten metres by ten. The walls, floor, and ceiling were black plastic, and each wall—aside from the one where the blue light had stood—had a doorway carved into it. I had a feeling that these doorways led to similar, identical rooms.
Back in the dungeon. Back in Level Zero.
I whimpered. I tried to rein it in, but failed.
Josh dropped to his knees, digging in his pockets.
It could have been a dream. It really could have. But here I was again…
“One sec,” Josh grunted. He put the flashlight down. Light rolled across the floor. His hands patted his back pockets, his front, and finally reached into his hoodie and pulled out a pocket knife.
The others stood calmly as if this was all normal. Josh pried the blade open with his thumb and forefinger, steadied the knife blade down, and scraped it along the floor.
The blade left blue light shining behind it, like black-lite paint.
I patted my pockets.
“Where’s my phone?” I slurred. “I had a phone.”
Josh drew away from the glowing mark. Laurent ambled up, raised the bat, and brought it down.
The blue light flickered out.
Josh scraped the knife against the floor again. Again, a line of light welled up where he’d cut. The light sharpened the lines of his face. When the subtle blue combined with the dull glow of the flare, his eyes turned into black pools.
Josh backed off. Laurent hit the glowing mark again. Sparks flew, and sizzled out. The two looked like blacksmiths forging metal.
“What’re they doing?” I asked, pointing dumbly at them “Where’s my cell phone?”
“It’s just a bug,” Amrith said. He looked away from Josh and Laurent as they scraped and smashed the floor. “Level Zero has them just like the real world. This is a simple one.”
Josh and Laurent did their thing five more times. The fifth time Laurent’s bat struck the glowing brand, it didn’t go out. Josh took out his knife, held it over the mark, and stabbed it down. The mark blipped, and vanished. Just plain floor again now.
Somehow, the interplay of light made me a bit sick. And I had an uneasy feeling if I looked where Josh had made the marks, I wouldn’t even see a scratch on the floor.
“Now all the gates will shine brighter,” Amrith whispered. “We need to find gates because we just destroyed the old one.”
“What’s a gate?” I asked. “I had a cell phone, a Moto.”
Josh grabbed his flashlight and spun it up. “Where’d I put the pack?” He muttered to himself. He threw the light around until it hit a backpack tucked into the corner of the room. The backpack was a black Swiss Gear, with a tiny red Swiss Cross glinting on the front.
Laurent grabbed the bag by the straps, and unzipped the top. He turned it over and shook the contents out onto the floor. Everyone bent down to pick the stuff up. It looked like more road flares and some flashlights.
“Where’d my cell phone go?” I asked. “And my laptop?”
“You didn’t come with any of that stuff.” Josh muttered. Something clicked in his hands. Another flashlight lit up in his hands. He brought both under his face and showed a darkened smile. “Welcome to Level Zero.”
Josh spun the flashlight around and handed it to me.
“I had a cell phone,” I muttered as I took the flashlight. It felt heavy, with a thick rubber casing that absorbed the sweat on my palms. I backed up and felt the wall on my back. “I had my journalism equipment. My cell phone.”
“You left your apartment at one o’clock,” Lena said, looking down as she got her own flashlight working. It flicked on, and she turned the beam to the floor.
“You didn’t even have shoes on.” She continued. “ You walked about ten-k down to the parking garage of the Etobicoke library. Then you waited there while a Stalker Man opened a gate.”
Why was Lena lying?
“I went to the beach.” I said. Flashlights lit up in Laurent and Amrith’s hands.
“You opened a gate and nearly got us all killed,” Laurent said.
“Look at your feet,” Amrith whispered.
I swung my flashlight down.
My shoes were gone. On my feet, I wore only white gym socks. Dirt and dust had discolored the soles. Dark red and yellow flakes caked the line of my left foot. Blood and blisters.
But...
“I went. To. The. Beach.” I nearly wailed.
“Stay calm,” Josh said.
I was calm. I was so fucking calm right now I nearly screamed it at him. I backed against the wall, shaking.
“Hey? Hey!” Laurent shouted. I didn’t look up at him. He grabbed my chin and pointed me at his face.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Laurent said. “For now we’ve got to get out of here.”
I swallowed, screwed my eyes shut, and nodded. Getting out of here sounded like a very good idea.
Laurent let go of my face.
“We’ll go one hundred rooms out, then meet back here,” Lena said. Everyone nodded. “Laurent stays here with this guy.”
“Name’s Sam,” I mumbled.
“Stays here with Sam,” Lena corrected.
“I’ll bring you up to speed,” Laurent sighed.
Lena, Amrith and Josh each headed through a different doorway. Their footsteps quickly faded out.
My feet hurt.
I crouched, stumbled, and sat down against the wall. I clicked off my flashlight and buried my face in my good hand.
Laurent sighed. He paced around a bit until placing his flashlight so it stood up on the ground. Then he sat down as well. He folded the bat across his knees like a samurai with his sword.
“We’ve been looking for you since last night,” Laurent said.
“I’m sorry I punched Josh,” I said.
Laurent shrugged. “He was a dick.”
“He feels bad though.” Laurent continued, looking around the room with a casual vigilance. “So do I. If we’d checked the seal then the Stalker Man couldn’t have set that trap for you.”
More crazy lingo for more crazy things. I rubbed my forehead.
“I think we’re even now,” Laurent said.
The road flare in the corner made little gasping noises. The red light flickered, leaped, and finally fizzled out to a glowing red dot. Soon, it was just an afterimage.
We sat in the dark. Laurent’s flashlight gave the only light. Black walls on black shadows—it confused my eyes, made the walls do funny things. It almost looked like they were breathing.
“What happened?” I whispered.
“A Stalker Man marked you,” Laurent said.
He shifted his position. His bat lost balance o
n his knees, and dipped toward the ground.
Laurent snatched the bat. His hands flew so fast you’d think the thing was made of dynamite. Carefully, he settled it back on his knees and continued. “And now he wants to finish the job. He can control you to an extent, but we have ways of countering that control.”
“What is a Stalker Man?” I asked.
Laurent told me.
The Stalker Men were a manifestation of Level Zero.
Like Level Zero, they were junk data: random bits of physical laws that formed a rudimentary consciousness by intersecting at just the right place.
The Stalker Men were different from anything on Earth. No cells, no thought, no emotion we could grasp. They experienced reality on a different level. Creatures of information, they had no discernible language, no writing, and no contact with anything except themselves and the insides of Level Zero.
They were, fundamentally, alien.
They could alter Level Zero: turn the temperature down, stretch the walls to vistas exceeding the known universe, bend space, or delete it quietly out of existence. They were all-powerful inside this world.
No one knew what powers they held in the real world. As long as they had access to an unsealed gate, they could technically do anything. But usually, they did not enter the real world, they didn’t bother humans. Probably didn’t even know we existed.
But sometimes...
Sometimes, the Stalker Men marked people. No one knew why, but the people who did get marked always behaved the same way. The Stalker Men lured them into Level Zero for short spells, and their human victims slowly suffered the inevitable symptoms: delusions, altered consciousness, and eventually, complete disappearance inside the black, lightless halls of Level Zero.
Most people didn’t reappear after a Stalker Man had marked them.
“But,” Laurent assured me. “We aren’t most people. We can fight them.”
“With baseball bats?” I muttered. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and shivered. My stomach panged. I’d probably get diarrhea tonight—standard response to stress.
“We know how to use bugs.” Laurent said, oblivious to my intestinal distress. “And we discover more all the time. The Stalker Men can’t learn—we don’t think. So that gives us an advantage.”
“Bugs?” I asked.
“They’re like these glitches in physics—in the rules,” Laurent said. “We’ll have to show you later. See, when we discovered Level Zero we also discovered that we could—”