SILAS

The throbbing pain in my neck. It lingers. I drift in a state somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, wracked by pain from an imagined injury. Hot and red, like flame licking in through a hollow point in my neck.

Only...that's not right, is it? The bite, that was on my left side, about halfway up my neck. It was a stabbing sensation. But this is new. This is on my right, just above the collarbone. And it's more like a steady electric current, running into me. A sore, burn-y feeling. It goes on, and on, and on. It doesn't seem to want to let up.

I'm trapped here, in this eerie dark of both body and mind. The only stimulation, the only thing I can feel at all, is that stupid thing in my neck, whatever it is. I have the sense that it is some physical thing, clinging to me. Stuck.

For a long time, it's like this. The seconds drag. Or minutes. Or...hours? I have no idea.

Then...something else. A new presence. As alien as it is immutable. Whatever it is, I can't stop it from...integrating. Coming in.

A click. Audible, somehow. Like a light switch being flipped.

I open my eyes.

Ahead of me is a long, dimly lit hallway. Little lamps, high up on the ceiling, cast white cones of light in a direct beam onto the tiled floor, but seem to touch little else. There's a dense darkness in the corners and fringes, defiant in its opaqueness. Thick motes of dust linger in the air, drifting in and out of the illuminated areas.

Doors. A bunch of them, on both the left and right sides of the hallway, stretching ahead. At a certain point, it looks like they come to a stop. Or maybe I just can't see them, because there's a place where the lamplight ends, and it's just darkness beyond that.

An abrupt pounding sound makes me jump. The first thing that comes to mind is the way Gemma used to pound on the bathroom door while I was still taking a shower, yelling that she needed the bathroom to finish getting ready for school.

That was a long time ago, wasn't it? Years and years. Almost half my life. As far as I know, or remember.

"Gemma?"

There's no answer, except for the words themselves echoing back.

Another pound. The sound of a fist on hollow wood. Followed by two more, in a row.

Even though I was waiting, listening intently, I still can't pinpoint the origin. It reverberates in the walls, as if it's coming from everywhere at once.

I decide to check the doors. They're solid-looking, with a dark, walnut texture to the door itself, metal lever handles for the knob, and tall, rectangular windows set at head height.

It takes a moment of investigation—too long, really—before I realize they look like the doors at my old middle school. In fact, they are those doors.

I try the first one.

The lever catches and rattles.

Locked.

I try to peek in through the window, but the glass is murky, and there are only vague silhouettes on the other side, shifting eerily, like shadows cast from smoke. Perhaps the perceived movement itself is just a trick of the mind. Perhaps all of this is. What else could this be but a dream?

A dream within a dream.

That thumping, pounding sound again.

I move from door to door, checking all of them. Each progressive door is on an alternate side of the hallway from the one before. I count them as I go. I check the levers, and the windows, but with the same degree of luck each time. Locked, and with only shadowy shapes and forms visible through the glass, nothing definitive.

Soon, I reach the end of the lamplight, with only thick darkness ahead.

Nine doors. All locked. All with strange secrets hidden away on the other side.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.

This time, for whatever reason, the origin of the noise is obvious. It’s coming from directly ahead. Somewhere in the dark.

Click.

Another ceiling light comes on, a bright yellow bar, perfectly illuminating the last stretch of hallway, leading to a door directly ahead.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

The doorknob wiggles. There’s something on the other side. Trying to get in.

It’s locked, from my side.

The window in the door is like the others, grainy and obscured, like fog, but this time there’s light on the other side. Light, and something else. Someone.

“Hello?” says 'someone'.

It’s that girl. Shiloh. Her hair looks shiny and gold through the glass, framing her face. Her nose lifts. Her eyes peer up at me. I can see the shapes of things. The positioning. But I can’t make out her expression.

“I see you, in there,” she says.

And? What should I even say to that? I see you, too?

We are, each of us, on opposite sides of some kind of boundary. A boundary which seems to be in my control.

For now.

“Don’t answer her,” says another voice, this one from behind me.

It is alien and familiar all at once. I swivel to look back. But I already know. It's my mother. But not my real mother, the one I once knew, back in the before, that time I know for sure must be real. This is just the rotting, zombie-esque version of her. The one who gouged my neck with her teeth. She is some dire manifestation of my trauma, or madness, or who knows what.

For all that, categorizing this phenomenon feels a lot like an attempt to diminish it. Capture it like a beetle in a jar, so I can look at it clinically from a distance, while it's under my control.

But here she is. Right in front of me. Her skin is bloated and dark. Her hair is matted against her head and face, and bulging with reeds and other gunk from the river. Her head and neck loll to one side, lacking the full range of muscle to stay upright. The 'whites' of her eyes are more blue than anything else. Her eyelids are half-closed, as if with some sort of suspicion, if she's even capable of that in her condition. Her clothes are ratty and torn. Her body is plagued by bruises and cuts and sores. Flies buzz about her head and shoulders, casting little shadow dots on the wall and floor.

"She...wants something from you," she says, with some effort.

"And what do you want?" I say, remembering the things this phantom spoke into my ear, before she bit into me. Calling me a failure. Disowning me.

"The only thing any mother wants," she says. "The best. For my children. For my family."

I cock my head at that. At the dissonance of it.

Suddenly, her cheeks bulge, and her eyes go wide. She bends forward and vomits, only it's just water that comes out, two or three gallons of it. It splats onto the tiled floor and rolls in waves, washing against the walls, rolling lengthways down the hall. It reaches my—apparently bare—feet, running through and over my toes. It's uncomfortably frigid. But I don't move. The air is thick with the musk of river soil and rocks.

Mother looks up at me. Embarrassed, panting for air. She falls to one knee. Still looking at me, pleadingly.

"Please," Shiloh says, through the door behind me. "I'm just trying to help my people. I want to give them something better. Something real. I want to save them! And I think you can help me. But you need to let me in. We're running out of time."

"She needs you, because you're special," Mother says. "But you don't need her. You have a destiny. And it's with your people, not them."

"I-" I stare at her. "I don't have a 'people'. Not anymore. Dad wouldn't even talk to me, after. And now...this..."

"You're wrong. You're dead wrong. And one day, you'll have to choose."

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.

"Please!" Shiloh says, behind me.

"You're not real," I say to Mother. "Why should I choose something imagined over something that actually exists?"

"How do you know any of this is real?"

Well. She's got me there.

"You don't know the truth. You can't, yet. And I'm sorry, Silas. It's impossible for me to tell you. But you have to believe me. Your destiny is not with them. And if you go down this road, it's going to make everything all the more difficult when the time finally comes. Don't do this."

"That Biodroid that was after you," Shiloh says, her voice muffled somewhat by the closed door. "His name is Daimon. You've got something he wants. Something lodged in your memory. We just don't know what. We're not sure we should even hand you over. But if we don't, he's going to come for us. Soon, we'll have to give you up, and we don't know what the consequences will be for that. And I don't think you want that, either."

"You'd be better off if they do hand you over," Mother says. "You're more likely to die if they don't. Especially if you resist. You can't beat him, Silas."

"So I should just let him win?" I say. "Let the murderers get their way? I should just let Sal's death be for nothing?"

"You're not thinking clearly," Mother says. She's on her hands and knees now, struggling to hold up her head at an angle where she can still see me. "You don't even know who Sal is."

"I know I made a promise to her."

"But you won't trust me? Your own mother?"

Not my mother. A figment. A phantom.

"You're right," I say. "I don't know...anything, really. None of this could be real. Maybe it all is. But either way, I can't risk history repeating itself. I can't let these people down, the way I let down you, and Gemma. I can't be that person anymore. I have to hold on to what's in front of me. I have to do something. If I let this slip away, I'll regret it forever."

"You think so now," the ghost of my mother says, nearly flat against the floor, face hidden by the tufts of hair cascading in front, bunching on the floor. "But you don't know the truth. And I cannot tell you. Not yet. I'm sorry, Silas."

"Me too," I say, though I don't know why. Though it's just a memory of my mother, perhaps I still feel the need to placate her, leave some room for reconciliation.

"One day soon," she says, curling in on herself on the floor. "You will have to choose."

"I already have," I say.

"No," she says. "But you will. You will."

She disappears. One moment, she is there. And the next, gone. So is the water, and that verdant smell of the river, and the buzz of the flies. Every trace has gone away with her.

It is only me. And the hall. And the slight, subtle squeak of the hanging lamps up above, swaying briefly in some unseen breeze.

Another loud thump on the door behind me.

"Please! C'mon!"

Oh. Right.

"Wait," I say, my hand on the knob. "If I do this, can you promise to help me get my OS back online?"

"I..." A pause. "If we can trust you."

"I have no intention to harm your people," I say. "That's not why I came here. If anything, I want to help."

"If that's true," she says, "Then we have no reason not to help you."

That might be as good an answer as I'm going to get.

I turn the lock, then the knob. I pull back, opening the door.

At that exact same moment, Shiloh shoves forward, into and through the doorway, slamming into me.