Glitch. Part 6

I closed my eyes and started really thinking.

Each room seemed to lead into another, identical room. If that was true, they'd look like a grid. I pressed the image of a grid into my head.

If I wanted to find an exit, I'd have to explore as much as possible. To explore as much as possible, I'd make rings around this room-the one with the line-as a starting point, and as the central axis of the rings I made. I'd complete larger and larger concentric rings around the blue-line until I found something. The blue line would keep me anch.o.r.ed, and if I got confused I'd just have to find it again by counting the number of rings I'd made.

To my rattled logic, this idea beat Einstein.

I started from the room to the right of the blue line. Inside that room, I used the dimmed light to find the left doorway. I entered that new room, felt around again, and once again found a doorway on the left. I went through it. I moved slowly. I didn't know if anything lived here. If something did, I didn't want to meet it.

I made careful steps through the dark. I counted every doorway knowing that if I lost my bearings I'd drown in a sea of identical rooms.

Sometimes, I stopped to pa.s.s my hands over the walls. I tried to feel for any changes in the rooms. They never grew larger, and they always housed four doorways cut in the exact middle of the wall.

I kept on counting, and I kept on moving. I didn't move blind: the blue line glowed bright when the only alternative was darkness. If I was in a room with doorways that aligned with the blue line's light, I could see it, even thirty rooms down.

The blue line was my new sun-rising and falling as I orbited it.

As I pa.s.sed carefully through the darkness, I practised my counting. I counted the number of rings I travelled. I counted each room I crossed.

When the counting got boring, I worked out a calculation for how many rooms I crossed as I wound every ring around the blue line. Then I dug out my calculus and figured out my time and rate of progress.

I counted a lot of numbers. And every time I pa.s.sed the centre line of a ring, I saw the blue light glimmering down the endless halls.

I went from room 110 to 111 to 112. I traversed room 130, 140, and 150, travelling along my orbit, the blue light always punctuating the long stretch of darkness every time I pa.s.sed it.

After an eternity of marching, I reached room 210. Room 210 was like every other room, differentiated only by the room that came after it: room 211 was the centre-line of ring eleven.

I entered room 211, and looked to my left, expecting to see the blue light glimmering down the hall.

Instead, there was nothing.

The blue light was gone.

Maybe I'd counted wrong.

But I hadn't counted wrong.

Panic bubbling up, I turned around. I had to backtrack. Maybe I'd missed something.

I ran into a wall.

"Ah!" I clutched my forehead. It stung. I stumbled back. The floor turned beneath me. My mental compa.s.s spun left-right-up-down in what now was total darkness. No sun, not even that brief blue mote of light.

I stretched out and probed for the wall. I misjudged the distance, and stumbled on my knees, reaching blind until I found it-the wall, safe and secure and unmoving.

I drew myself into the wall, breathing hard. My a.s.s wedged into the corner. I swung my head, as if trying to shake the darkness off. But the darkness stayed.

I clung to the wall, not knowing where I was. I forgot the door I'd come from. I forgot the door I'd planned to enter. I forgot my plan. The darkness unmoored me. In my head the neat grids and numbers I'd devised to help me turned grey and brittle and fell apart, sinking into that endless dark.

I closed my eyes. I opened them. It made no difference.

Close.

Open.

Close.

Open.

Blue light.

Close.

Open.

Blue light again.

What the h.e.l.l?

My hands patted for the wall behind me. I got a grip, and slowly pushed myself up.

The blue light flickered down the row of rooms in front of me. I leaned in against the doorway and watched it.

It looked like a blue star from here.

It looked beautiful.

Then the light flickered. It sputtered, almost like candle flame.

The blue line hadn't flickered when I'd been there. Was it-powering down or something?

No, that didn't sound right. When I'd seen it, that light looked like it could glow forever.

Unless something was blocking the light.

Unless someone was standing in front of it.

I froze. The light in the distance flickered a final time, and finally glowed normally. If something was there, it had moved to the next room.

I spun away from the light. An infinity of dark rooms stretched ahead of me.

The reappearance of the light had re-established my compa.s.s. The light was south. I went towards my imaginary north. When I went to the next room I veered right on an imaginary west.

I cut a zigzag through the maze of rooms. I counted every iteration of north and west. I wasn't going to get lost again.

My head didn't know why I ran. If something or someone was back there, he or she or it might be able to help me out. Maybe those two guys had discovered me. Maybe whoever was in charge here had discovered me. Maybe they just wanted to help.

But to my gut, that sounded too good.

Something had followed me down here, the thing from the construction pit. The thing that stole Jonathan's voice.

I hadn't heard Jon's voice in years. I didn't even look at the family videos anymore for fear of seeing him.

After ten north-west zig-zags I broke into a trot. I couldn't hear anything, but despite the movement, I began to feel cold. At fifteen zig-zags my stride lengthened to jog. At seventeen I was sprinting, and if I could see I'd swear my breath was fogging.

I hit my shoulder on the edge of a doorway. I winced, swore, and hissed the pain out. On reflex, I looked back for the room with the blue light. But I'd lost it about fifty zig-zags ago.

I gritted my teeth. A bead of sweat dripped off my nose and cooled. Why was it so cold now?

"It felt cold." I heard a m.u.f.fled voice say.

"We'll call them off," said another.

My breath caught. The pounding in my ears had distorted the voices, but I recognized them anyway.

"Did you hear that?"

"This is wrong man. We obviously miscalculated. Let's call it off before we lose someone."

I knew those voices. They belonged to Satchel Bag and Tape Measure Guy.

In the room ahead of me, a beam of light wavered on the ground. After so long in the dark it burned my eyes. It was a flashlight.

I bolted to it.

"Help!" I yelled. My voice echoed around me.

The flashlight stammered back and forth.

"Hear that?"

"s.h.i.+t!"

"Help!" I yelled again.

"Holy s.h.i.+t what is that!?"

I chased the flashlight beam. It led me to two silhouettes. I threw my arms up. One of them screamed, and slapped me across the face. I hardly felt it-adrenaline burned out the pain.

"What the h.e.l.l?" The screamer shouted.

"Get me out of here!" I screamed back.

"Who are you?"

"Wait." The guy with the flashlight-I think he was Tape Measure, even though the two men now lacked their defining tools-brought the light up to my face. My eyes burned with the sweet, holy, manmade light.

"Who is this guy?" The screamer shouted. I think he was Satchel Bag.

"Get me out of here." I said. "Please please please. I won't tell anyone about your hologram or

whatever."

"s.h.i.+t. How'd he get down here?" Tape Measure asked Satchel Bag.

Satchel Bag didn't answer.

"Look over there." Satchel Bag's shadowed hands rose. A finger pointed behind me.

I turned around.

There was something about ten rooms down. Two tiny lights, the same colour as the blue line, almost like eyes.

The lights blinked.

"c.r.a.p." Tape Measure whispered.

The two guys bolted. I ran after them. Someone screamed and it might have been any one of us.

I didn't get it. Maybe the relief of finding people in the lightless dungeon had confused my emotions. I didn't understand why the lights scared them, or why they ran down the doors that they did. If there was an order to the rooms they chose to go down, I didn't see it.

The two guys ran fast. They didn't tire and they screamed a lot.

It was even colder now. The fringe of my hair crinkled with frozen sweat. It hurt to breath.

My feet dragged on the ground. I forced them to move. I forced my arms to swing and my body to keep close to these two guys. But I began to fall behind.

After a while, I looked over my shoulder.

The twin dots weren't there. I stopped.

"Come on r.e.t.a.r.d!" Tape Measure shouted.

We ended up in another room with a blue line. Tape Measure's flashlight bobbed, wavered, and vanished. The blue line grew brighter. It cut across my vision and turned everything to blue, then to white.