VI.
Our Lady of Respite – Site-B
“What’s your name?” Vagari had asked, a question that most might not think difficult, but the mysterious other seemed to take great pause at it. Static was a reply for the longest time before at last the voice broke through.
“I was thinking more like giving you directions,” the voice admitted softly.
“Do both,” replied Vagari curtly as he took the terminal in both hands and plucked it free from its mount. A faded red battery sign lit up in the far corner. Its ancient battery wouldn’t hold a charge for long, but long enough, Vagari figured. “Let’s start with introductions. I’m Vagari and I’ll be your rescuer this evening. Now you.”
“Oh – neato! I mean, that’s not my name…” the other stammered sheepishly before adding, “I just didn’t know they could do that. I don’t really know. My UID is BP 2-8-57.”
“UID? Well, that’s a bit of a mouthful,” Vagari said as he made his way passed the desk and down the hall behind it, “so how about BP for short? Where to, BP?”
There came another pause, a minute of radio silence as the other seemed to stew on the matter. They broke their silence again once Vagari had reached the end of the hallway. “That’s fine – just BP works too,” BP announced cheerily. “Can I call you Vag?”
“I’d really rather you didn’t,” Vagari answered with a huff of laughter. “Where to now, BP? I’m at the end of the first corridor passed the help desk. Also, second question… How long have you been here? This isn’t exactly on travel brochures.”
“Oh, okay… OH – sorry, too far! The first room on the left going in, to get around the barricades. Sorry, I’m just excited is all… sorry,” BP sputtered out in the staticky voice of the computer intelligence. “Um – I’ve been here… all my life.”
“It’s okay, don’t worry. You don’t need to apologize,” Vagari said calmingly as he turned back down the hall. “I’d be excited to get out of here too.”
‘2-8-57,’ he was sure that their UID or ‘Unique Identifier’ was a date as much as a serial number. February 8th was surely the first two thirds of it, but whether the year was 2257, 2357, or 2457 remained speculation. Vagari figured the ‘BP’ part of it was probably an acronym for something, but he doubted even the name-barer knew what it meant. Whoever they were, they probably were more patient than doctor judging by it.
Vagari opened the door and entered into a side room. At one point in time it had been a breakroom, but had since been converted into a mass triage center. Beds with barely two feet between them stretched from wall to wall in both directions. All of them were empty, but bore obvious signs that that hadn’t always been the case. Most were stained black and yellow – with what, Vagari didn’t want to know. Vagari started across the room following the only true path between them, the path of destruction. The middlemost beds were bent and distorted, as if some large thing had plowed over them, all leading to another wall riddled with bullet holes. Whatever monster they unleashed had made its escape right through here, tearing through everything and everyone like a rampaging beast. The scene painted a cruel but just picture – they were afraid, and it was angry.
“Third question, BP,” Vagari announced as he crept down the path of ruin to the only other door in the room. “Do you know what happened here?” It was a question he doubted they could answer. But, if they could, then perhaps it would solidify a year in the puzzle.
“Something bad, I know that…” BP told him, sadness plainly replicated by the computer’s voice. “Dr. Xu told me that something really bad happened, and that everyone was gone. I don’t know where they went, but he’s gone too now.”
Dr. Xu wasn’t a name Vagari was familiar with. Whoever he was, this Xu wasn’t one of his fellow horsemen; an assumption that Vagari supposed was an unfairly generous one when he scrutinized it. He hadn’t held onto his name, why should they? He had to know more. “Tell me, BP… about this Dr. Xu, I mean,” Vagari inquired nonchalantly as he pushed into the next room. “Was he a nice man? Do you know what Dr. Xu was doing here?”
“He was, he was! The nicest man I’ve ever met,” The robotic voice burst, very barely letting him finish his sentence. “He never stopped coming to see me, even after he lost his leg; even when they said I wasn’t what they were looking for! He just got a new leg, and then said to them… He said maybe they needed to look harder – that I was special,” BP proclaimed in a bluster. “He took me and-and-and taught me how to read! Now I read everything! That’s how I learned about the A.I. and all sorts of other things. OH – sorry, directions – sorry! Um… Up ahead you’ll see a closet, right? Right. But it isn’t really a closet. It’s an elevator. Have you seen one before? They’re really cool, going up and down, but also kind of scary.”
The corridor Vagari found himself in was for the most part un-notable. On either side were a set of single doors, plain and black with tiny windows of fogged glass. One was marked ‘On-Call Room’ with the other featuring more of the same. Vagari stared into the fogged glass, remembering the countless nights he chose to spend in a room much like the one just beyond, in the company of haggard drones and madmen instead of in the warmth of his own bed with his beloved close beside him. Vagari slid his hand across the glass and looked away.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
At the back of the short hall were two more doors; one to his left and one directly ahead. The left one, another pane of transteel, unmistakably bore the scars of something, or someone being thrown into it. It seemingly led outside, and probably to an enclosed courtyard too seeing the door wasn’t marked an exit. Whoever the entity had caught there hadn’t cared much where the door led, just that it led outside, too afraid to think straight.
Vagari turned to the second door – an inset closet marked ‘Maintenance Access – Authorized Personnel Only.’. “What could it be,” Vagari mused to himself in singsong as he started towards the closet, “behind door number three?”
“An elevator,” BP quickly reminded him before adding softly, “but I guess you haven’t seen one before. So, imagine a box…”
“No, I have,” Vagari confirmed with a laugh as he opened the closet and stepped inside. “I used to work in a building very much like this one at a point in time. That’s to say I’m familiar with their workings.” Once the door was secured behind him the small space lit up and the back wall of empty shelves slid in and sideways, doubling the room in depth with a steel extension. Vagari walked forward and onto the metal flooring. The elevator had no buttons he could see, only a dial pad with a card-reader just below it. Vagari doubted his master-code would grant him access to a facility he hadn’t even believed existed, but he gave it a shot anyways. “Authorization Code: Vagabundum-52-B-8972,” Vagari announced clearly. “Activate lift controls.”
“UNKNOWN AUTHORIZATION CODE,” the A.I. blared. “ACCESS: DENIED. PLEASE REPEAT YOUR CODE. ONE OUT OF THREE ATTEMPTS MADE.”
“Yeah, thought so… BP,” Vagari called out, “you’ll have to access the elevator from your end.”
“Right, one moment… Thoth is picky – I gotta get the tone right…” BP answered shortly, followed by a confirmation by the A.I. saying, “ACCESS: GRANTED. WELCOME BACK, DR. XU.”
A pale blue light flickered on, filling the interior as the elevator hummed to life and began its descent. Vagari placed his hand on the smooth metal wall to steady himself. A small paranoid part of him still suspected his journey into the underworld would end with the slamming of a cage door, forever trapped in the chthonic depths of that arcane place. Was that his fate? Just another victim of Site-B?
Vagari could feel that haunting feeling creeping up on him again, that dread inducing wrongness. It washed over him as sudden and fatal as a tidal wave, spilling down over his shoulders into churning guts. Vagari pressed his forehead against the cold metal of the elevator wall and tried to will it away as he had before, but it only grew heavier and closer every agonizing second the lift inched along its tether, closer than ever before. The urge to turn away and run as fast as he could was nearly overwhelming. Damn the book, it insisted, damn Soprano, damn the whole world – just run! Vagari shut his eyes tight and cursed through clenched teeth.
That feeling, what was it? Was it just some frightened part of him that chose these series of events to rear its ugly head? Something else entirely? The fear, the panic, it always felt outside of him when the feeling draped itself upon him. It never seemed to be caused by any one thing, a coincidence rather than a symptom. Alto’s gruesome fate flashed fresh to the forefront of his mind. He hadn’t been prepared to see him in such a manner, but he had dealt with death before, and it angered him more than anything. He wanted revenge, so why was he here shaking in his boots? The feeling was haunting him, following like a curse, a malicious spirit clinging to his back. Part of him wondered if maybe that was the case. Was that it? Did he get cursed some how and now a spirit whispered fear and alienation into his ear?
There came a loud chime as the elevator came to a sudden and abrupt stop. Vagari just stood there, frozen as the doors slowly parted ways. He then staggered out in a daze, heaving as he leaned back against the wall, glad to be free of the coffin like elevator. And no sooner did he, the feeling seemed to wash away as suddenly as it had poured over him. It wasn’t gone, not wholly, but had boiled down to a nauseating simmer he could manage. For a moment, all he could do was wipe the sweat from his brow and take in the world around him.
He had stepped into a realm all too familiar; the haunt of another lurking ghost – his own. It was a laboratory, or at least it was the entrance to one; a small room with a checkpoint and a security booth – identical to the one he had passed through more times than the doorway home. Vagari shift his gaze to the embossed metal sign above the checkpoint that read in bold red letters: BETA LAB – Simulacrum Level. “Site-B…” Vagari uttered under his breath. “Simulacrum Level? What were you people doing here?” He looked away and back down to the tablet before saying louder, “BP, can you still hear me?” He slid a hand down his face, still trying to shake off the attack. “Do you… Do you know of any active security measures I need to worry about: turrets, hard-light fields, the like?”
“Yes, I can hear you,” the robotic voice chimed excitedly before adding, “Not anymore – the measures, I mean… I can still hear you just fine.” Just then the true A.I. announced with a loud and thankfully singular alarm blare, “CONTAINMENT PROTOCOLS HAVE BEEN DEACTIVATED. THIS MODE IS NOT ADVISED. VIOLATION TICKET SENT TO ADMINISTRATOR. ERROR – CONNECTION UNAVAILABLE.”
“Containment protocols?” Vagari echoed solemnly. “BP, you never did answer my question. What exactly did Dr. Xu do here?”
“I… I don’t kno-…” BP began before sinking into a momentary silence. “I don’t like to think about it,” they amended as the silence broke. “He was good to me when everyone else… wasn’t. He was good… to me. I’m sorry, I don’t want to talk about that. I’m just down the hall in Administrations, but… I’ve unlocked the labs along the way. He locked them so I wouldn’t look, back when it was just the two of us. I – I never looked, but maybe something in one of them will give you answers. I’ve waited this long, I can wait a few more minutes.”
Vagari didn’t press the issue. Whatever they really were, living thing or deviant A.I., there was no masking the fear in the simulated voice. It was a certain kind of fear, one he had known well growing up, with his father wielding it like a hammer. Singing praise with words steeped in fear – it didn’t paint a loving picture of the man no matter how colorful the colors were. Vagari strode forward passed the checkpoint and into the shadowed halls beyond. The overhead lights lit one by one with each advancing step, sputtering to life with loud clicks that echoed into the further darkness. Vagari counted eight labs, four on each side. He looked to the first door, labeled “Stage-1” and turned the handle.