Glitch. Part 15

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 s.h.i.+fted his position. His bat lost balance on his knees, and dipped toward the ground.

Laurent s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 a.s.sured me. "We aren't most people. We can fight them."

"With baseball bats?" I muttered. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and s.h.i.+vered. 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-"

"Walk on air?" I interrupted.

I heard a grin in Laurent's answer. "We can do a bunch of stuff. Like, superpower s.h.i.+t. It's thanks to this one guy, Haze. He knows everything."

I half-listened. I put a hand down on the floor and tried to lie down. But it felt too uncomfortable-the floor was too warm, like a toilet seat just after someone leaves it. So I got back up and played with my flashlight, clicking it on and off.

"You'll probably meet Haze one day," Laurent trailed off. He rapped his fingers on the walls.

I didn't think Laurent was lying-at least, I didn't think he was knowingly lying. But even after seeing him suspended in the air, I still didn't want to believe he could do superhuman s.h.i.+t. It wasn't my concern anyway. I didn't want to be Superman. I wanted to blog. That was it.

"So, you believe Leafs and Sens last week?" Laurent asked.

"I can't watch Leafs hockey anymore," I said. "It pains me."

Laurent clucked his tongue at me.

We sat in the dark. Sometimes, far off, I heard a sound like groaning metal. Sometimes-closer-I heard a sound like creaking wood. Laurent wasn't bothered, so I didn't worry either.

"Aren't they taking long?" I asked.

"Dunno," Laurent said. He reached for his flashlight and flashed it onto his wrist. The light shone off an expensive leather watch.

"Dunno." He sighed.

"I saw things," I said. "Back there. It was like a dream."

Laurent was silent. He flipped the flashlight beam up again, and placed it back on the ground. The light stood a little farther from him now, so I could only see the edge of his knee.

Then he spoke. "Haze thinks they can read your mind. They try to lull it into a false sense of security so you'll go along with them. What did you see?"

I ignored the question.

I put my palm on the warm floor. I couldn't feel anything-no rush of underground water, no vibrations of pa.s.sing traffic. As far as I knew, there was nothing beneath this ground.

And Josh's knife hadn't left any marks on the ground. I was sure of that. So sure I didn't even bother checking. This place was immune to us.

But then what lay beneath the ground here? And how high did the ceiling go until breaching a surface? Was there even an up or down here?

When you got right down to it-what was this place?

"The thing is though," Laurent began," Stalker Men don't get human emotions, so they'll put weird combinations in. Like, a v.a.g.i.n.a with lasagna in it. That's a good way to tell a Stalker Man is messing with you."

"The stuff I saw was stuff I wanted." I said. No emotion in what I said.

"It's probably a smart one then," Laurent commented. "s.h.i.+t luck."

I groaned.

"They've been gone a long time," Laurent said to himself. His fingers drummed the bat, making a hollow, silvery thrumming.

Hhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

A distant roar like clas.h.i.+ng glaciers howled through the endless halls.

"What the h.e.l.l?" I grabbed my flashlight and turned it on and winced; the light stung my eyes. I stumbled to my feet.

"Relax," Laurent said. I swung the beam at him. It spilled over his face and r.e.t.a.r.ded yellow sack-hat. He hissed. "Ah man what the f.u.c.k?"

"Just checking that you're not a Stalker Man," I said. The light in my hands shook. My stomach cramped.

"Hey we're safe." Laurent's eyes screwed up and I lowered the light.

I didn't believe him. I paced across the room, holding the flashlight to the ground like cops hold guns in movies.

"We broke the gate in time to seal if off." Lauren said. "It'll take ages for it to get back into Level Zero, and unless it has a gate to anchor itself to, it's powerless."

Laurent mumbled something.

"What?" I asked.

Laurent's clothes rustled and he stood up.

"Nothing," Laurent said.

Clink-clink-clink.

"And that? What's that?" I asked. I backed into the wall.

"What's what?" Laurent asked.

"That sound." I said. I reached across the wall. My fingers found the beginning of a doorway-a sharp angle cut into the wall.

"It's nothing," Laurent replied.

I edged over to the doorway, and peered into the next room.

Darkness. Even with Laurent's flashlight behind me, I couldn't see. I raised my own light into the doorway. The beam disappeared with the dark.

I s.h.i.+vered. Light traveled about 300 000 kilometers per second. If I couldn't see it reflected back, then Level Zero stretched very, very far.

Clink-clink-clink. A sound like homemade wind chimes rang down the rooms.

"How do you not hear that?" I asked.

"I hear it but I told you it's nothing," Laurent grunted. He was still standing. I could tell by where his voice came from. "Put the light off. The others will be back soon."

I lowered the light but kept it on. I tossed it around the room, checking the doorways. I strained to remember who went down the door beside me. Amrith, Lena, or Josh? Why couldn't I see them? A hundred rooms wasn't that much, was it?

"Please turn if off," Laurent said.

Clink-clink-clink.

"I don't see anyone down here," I said.

"Don't worry about it, just turn the light off." Laurent said. I pointed the flashlight to him and he s.h.i.+elded his eyes.

Laurent was holding his bat across his shoulder.

"Why do you have that?" I asked.

"Protection," Laurent said. He spun the bat and held it down so the head hovered just above the floor. "I call it the circuit breaker. Although really it does nothing like that."

"Huh." I said.

The air grew thicker. The room seemed smaller now; I was noticing how the ceilings cut too low, and how the walls seemed to press in, not like a mindless thing, but like a creature trying to test its boundaries.

Laurent felt too close as well.

I widened my feet. My centre of gravity settled. I tested the weight of the flashlight in my hand and the shaft of light jiggled.

"Please turn off the light," Laurent said.

Clink-clink-clink.

"I'd rather not." I replied.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

"Guys!" Lena's voice came m.u.f.fled down the hall. "Guys!"

Laurent's head perked.

My hand tightened around the flashlight.

Tap-tap-tap-tap the sound of tapping feet came louder and louder. I pressed myself against the wall next to the doorway.

I listened to the rising volume and made a guess.

My guess was: three seconds.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

Two.

Tap-tap-tap-tap.

One.

Lena burst in breathless.

She didn't look dangerous; I didn't jam the flashlight in her throat.