Glitch. Part 20

I kicked myself forward. I grabbed at the hole and stuck this time. The water ebbed out and grimy, gritty c.r.a.p 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 d.i.c.k 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 b.u.t.t 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 b.u.mped against rock. I put my hands out and felt empty s.p.a.ce.

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. "f.u.c.k. I hate coming down here. Usually we just get Josh to do it."

Water slopped around in the darkness. Gravel s.h.i.+fted. 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 prost.i.tute.

"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 s.h.i.+vering?" 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 p.e.n.i.s 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. G.o.d 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 skullf.u.c.k 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 cave, 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 s.h.i.+fted.

"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 r.e.t.a.r.ded," 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.