The room I was in was furnished with drab cushioned metal framed chairs and a table with magazines. There was a poster framed on the wall, one of those backhanded motivational statements printed on a stock photo of the Great Wall of China:

TEAMWORK

With Hard work, Motivation and Dedication,

you too can create Wonders.

Somebody had written on the wall underneath with a pen: “Yes, it only took the teamwork of millions of slaves. Remember, only 500,000 died constructing this wonder.”

I snorted. That sounded about right. There was a reception counter, walled off at the counter with yellowed glass, run through with metal mesh. The kind that always shows up in the bad part of town, harder to break through than the walls it’s bolted to. It had a round metal speaking hole, and a pass through drawer underneath. I couldn’t see through the glass, beyond a light on the other side illuminating it.

Past the creepy post-modern cave art, a hallway loomed, the overhead lights flickering ominously. A humanoid shadow fell on the security glass. It lingered for a minute, and I held my breath, then it moved away.

“Nope,” I said. “This is not my horror movie.”

I turned around, ready to take my chances with the men with guns, preferring the enemy I knew. I opened the double doors I had just burst through. And nearly ran face first into a brick wall.

“What?”

I backed up a step. It was a solid wall, floor to ceiling, old brick and mortar, weathered and stained by time. The mortar joints weren’t finished, bulging and dried without having been pointed smooth. It had the look of hasty construction, done a half century ago.

I reached out and touched it, half expecting it to be an illusion. It was solid. I picked at one of the bulbous mortar joints. It didn’t come free. My train of mouse gremlins began to squeeze through a crack in one of the corners, looking as confused as I felt. They blinked at the wall, then began investigating the mortar joints. I backed far enough away that the wall couldn’t fall on me.

After a minute or two, the fluff balls of curiosity and destruction grew bored and began exploring the creepy waiting room. One of the ceiling tiles fell to the floor with a crash, startling me.

“What is this place?” I said aloud.

***

Interlude

After telling the kid to run, future Timothy stood in the room with all the monitors. He could see the kid on the screens, even though the people in the room with him couldn’t. He was easy to spot, being the only thing in color in his strange grayed out existence. The witch calling herself Caroline was still barking orders, the techs falling behind as she continued to snap instructions.

“Come on, kid,” Timothy muttered, “Run.”

The kid got up and began to run right as the men entered the room. They spotted him and shouted, rifles snapping up and opening fire.

“Jesus,” Timothy said, wincing.

“Contact!” A voice crackled over the radio. “It’s the—“

The winching motor exploded, cutting off the shouts of the men. The monitor whited out, then the picture came back. The five men with rifles were all laying on the floor. None of them were moving. Caroline let out a marvelous string of Russian curses.

Timothy scanned the monitors until he found the view that contained the kid. He was on the floor too. Anxiety began to creep into Timothy’s mind. Then the kid got up and began running again.

“Holy fucking cheese on toast, that was too fucking close. You trying to see if you can give me an aneurism while I’m a ghost, kid? Fuck!”

The kid ran down the hallway and burst through a set of double doors. Timothy looked at a different screen, showing the room the doors opened into. He saw the doors slowly swing shut, but the kid was gone. Both the hallway he’d ran through and the room he’d run into were empty.

“What the fuck? Where did he go?”

***

Beside the creepy counter, there was a hallway. Down that hallway, I could see more windows and doorways. I edged into the hall. To my right, there was a window like the security glass, but the wire framing inside the glass was spaced further apart, leaving the window clear enough to see through. Curious, I looked inside. There were children's toys on the floor: blocks with letters and numbers painted in vivid colors, stacking rings on a cylinder, and small pushable toys for toddler dexterity exercises.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The walls were painted like what you might expect in a nursery—vivid, bright colors with animals that wouldn't even show up together on the same continent, peacefully hanging out as if that behavior was the most normal thing in the world. I scanned the picture, and there, sure enough, I saw something out of place. In the corner of the picture there was a Serengeti scene where a lion and his pride were bent over their kill, eating their fill. The classic "everyone at the dinner table" scene, only in lion speak. That meant everyone had their head dipped inside the gazelle. But they weren't lions. They were children in loincloths with spears. And they weren't using their hands to eat. They were covered in blood, eating the gazelle as if they were lions.

That wasn't the only thing that was off with the room. In the opposite corner, there was a towering scorch mark, as if someone had lit a fire in the corner and it had burned hot and quick. Several small plastic toys that were near that corner of the room had melted into puddles. I could see where the colorful carpeting depicting a happy train scene had burned away all the way down to the cement. Closer to the outer edges, it became black and charred, and then further away still, just melted where the pile of the carpeting had succumbed to the heat.

I heard a noise from behind me and spun, wishing at that moment that I had the foresight to search for a pen and draw the luck symbol on my palms.

A door opened, and I was confronted with a middle-aged man. He had salt-and-pepper stubble on his face, Coke bottle glasses, and a headlamp strapped to his head. He had a severe widow's peak and was balding, his hair tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing one of those blue button-up shirts that are just a step down from being denim. Over that, he had overalls that looked like they were closer to being waders, every pocket stuffed with tools of every shape and variety.

Besides the headlamp, he had a pen-light in his hand, his other hand still on the door handle. He looked up and saw me and shouted, "Gah! Sweet Mother Mary and Joseph, kid! Damn near gave me a heart attack. The hell you doing in here?"

He had a drawling Southern accent. "Shit, kid,” he was holding his chest and breathing hard. “Shouldn't even be possible for anyone to have gotten in here."

He looked me up and down. "Now, don't act like a scared rabbit. I ain't gonna hurt you. Damn, you just ain't supposed to be in here." He looked over my shoulder into the nursery with the bizarre children-lion-pride and burn mark. "Oh yeah, you sightseeing. That's creepy ass shit right there, isn't it?"

Unable to help myself, I turned and looked. "What happened?" I pointed to the scorch mark. "Why are there such bizarre paintings? This is like the world's worst nursery for prison babies.”

He burst out laughing, “Prison babies!” He wheezed between laughs. He slapped his knee, as he continued to hoot and laugh. I didn’t know people really did that.

“Whoo-wee!” He declared, once his laughter died down. “You are fuuuunyy!” He drew out the last word. “Prison babies…” he cleared his throat. “Well, probably can’t hurt nothing to tell you about this—seeing as how it’s all shut down now. They was collecting the oddballs here. The unnaturals. Had ‘em come in as young as six months. Some were just slightly weird. Could move stuff without touching it. Some… well, you see that scorched corner? Little baby did that. Didn’t hurt him none. He’d just imma… imma-something. He’d catch fire. Near hot enough to melt steel. Then turn off.” He snapped his fingers, “just like that. Poor kid…”

The man was silent for a long moment.

“We got that one so young because of what happened to his mama. She wasn’t flame proof like the little tyke.” He crossed himself, then brightened up, “I forgot to introduce myself! Name’s Tucker!” he stuck out a hand to shake.

“I’m Timmy Freak,” I said, taking his hand.

“Freak? You one of them unnaturals? No judgment. Never mind, I don’t wanna know. Lemme show you the way out kid. I gotta run around and try and keep this place from crumbling, but with a shoestring budget and a lot of chewing gum.”

“The weird pictures?” I asked, still curious.

“Oh, those? Kid could move pictures to what he wanted. I guess he liked the creepy shit. Dunno more than than. How’d you get in here anyway?”

“I made Caroline mad and men with guns chased me in here before that brick wall appeared out of nowhere.”

We began walking, the man leading me down the hallway.

“Caroline? Who’s that? Men with guns? We’re in the middle of the desert. Nobody around. Except us.”

“You don’t work for Caroline? Or Mr Black?”

“I work for the US government. Ain’t never heard tell of no Caroline or Mr Black. Sounds like a novel my missus likes to read. I stay away from that stuff. To much for me.”

I began to get the creeping feeling I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. I mean, in the down the rabbit hole kind of way, not literally. I had no idea what State I had been in when I woke up underground.

“Um… what State are we in?”

It must have sounded as weird as I thought, because Tucker stopped walking and looked at me through his thick glasses.

“I don’t see too good, but you is hard to look at. Anyone ever tell you that? We’re in Nevada, what State did you think you were in?”

“Something closer to home,” I said, thinking of my new home in South Dakota. “I’m far away somehow. It’s a long story.”

“Runaway huh? Well, I ain’t gonna turn you in, but still, you can’t hobo it up in here. Come on.”

He continued walking, leading me past other rooms with wire reinforced windows and children’s toys. We walked through a cafeteria, the abandoned and disused nature of the place becoming more apparent. We passed a window that had sunlight shining through, and I shaded my eyes against the glare. When the landscape came into focus, I saw what Tucker had said, desert. Sand and scrub bush marked the landscape, the sun bright and harsh.

“Almost there,” Tucker said.

He unlocked a set of doors and opened it to the heat and the outside. I followed him through, stepping into a jarring scene.

I was not outside. The desert was gone. Tucker was gone. I was surrounded by cement walls and dark corners. It was the facility where I had been taken to meet Caroline and the Tall man. I turned a slow circle, looking around. The set of doors behind me led into another dimly lit hallway.

“There you are, kid!” Not-me’s voice said from somewhere. “Where did you go?”

“I…” I fumbled for what to say. “I don’t know. Somewhere else.”

“Well, it was brilliant. You completely avoided twenty guys with guns boxing you in. They’re going crazy, trying to find you.”

“I sympathize,” I said. “I’m going a little crazy too. I was just in Nevada. Some sort of prison for powered children.”

“You were…” Not-me paused for a long moment. “You said Nevada? A prison for the powered?”

“Yeah, I met Tucker. Nice guy.”

“We’re in Colorado, kid. You’re sure you were in Nevada?”

“Colorado…” I breathed. That was a long way from home too. “I’m pretty sure… I saw the desert.”

“I think I’ve been to the site you mentioned. Like a creepy child prison?”

“Yeah,” I chuckled, liking how Not-me had the same thought.

“You sure it wasn’t a memory of mine? I shared more than I meant to when I gave you the memories of how to defeat locks.”

“No,” I said. “In those, I’m older. I was me, and the mouse gremlins followed me.”

“Ok… it sounds like you transported. I don’t know how, but we can figure that out later. You need to get moving, there are dangerous people searching for you. I can guide you from here. Try to avoid your reflection, so I can stay here in the camera room. And try not to transport again.”

“How?” I asked. “I think it’s already happened several times. I’ll walk through a doorway, and end up… somewhere else.”

“I don’t know, kid. That wasn’t a power I had. The transporters I knew said that it was any portal. If they stepped through a doorway or window, or crawled through an opening to another room, they’d end up someplace else. They each had their own unique map.”

“That’s helpful. How do I avoid doorways?”

“Do I look like the ghost with all the answers? Just get moving, and if you transport, keep moving. You keep coming back, right?”

“Seems that way.”

“Then worry later. Move now.”

I started moving. The hallway I was in was dim and had an open ceiling, conduits and cables snaking overhead. I heard voices behind me. Picking up the pace, I charged through the end of the hall and stepped into a stairwell, that ended up being the abandoned hospital again.

I called out, but no one answered. Not-me appeared to be still in the Colorado facility. I sighed, and kept going. Trying to ignore how haunted the building I was in looked. I had the sneaking suspicion, I was not in Colorado anymore.

***