Nicole stood in the basement, silently, in the dark. Vinn was asleep, like everyone else. She grabbed her water bottle and stepped closer to the wall, leaning against it as it breathed softly. She followed the sound away from the steps to the corner of the basement where jack had his carpentry tools in a bucket, lined with a leather harness she slowly opened the door behind it, an ordinary closet where the water lines came up from the concrete. She took a flashlight, a small carving knife, and stepped closer to the old concrete blocks that represented the foundation. She listened in silence, remembering or possibly hearing the click again. She wasn’t even sure. But she pushed the concrete block and the wall slid slightly. She opened the hidden door and noticed the single latch holding it shut, retracted. It extended again with the same click, as if to tell her this was a one time event. She placed a screwdriver down to prop it open so it would STAY unlocked and open.
She peered around the room and noticed a small black suitcase, the latches on it fully up in the open position. She lifted the lid and removed the handgun, a fairly common but illegal 10mm auto with the serial number missing and the tell tale seams of 3d printing, the kind you get from cheap civilian models. She put the holster on and slid the gun in, waiting for something, there was the second click she remembered, and she pressed the further wall, opening the other side and passing through. She placed another screwdriver down to keep that one open as well. She racked back the slide just like her shooter games, watched the bullet enter the chamber and latch shut.
“Alright…let’s do this.” She sighed.
Jack sat up suddenly in bed, checking Vicki who was still asleep. He checked her pulse, sigh of relief, and then got up. He walked the house, looking for anything out of place, and the only thing missing seemed to be the girl who was sleeping on top of Vinn. He went to the maintenance closet, opened the door and noticed his gun missing. He also noticed the thinnest razor of orange light coming from the back wall, the screwdriver keeping it open.
“What the hell?” he gasped, pushing the wall open, that he didn’t even know opened. The glow of the orange tunnel lights illuminated his face.
“You have got to be shitting me.” He said, silently darting to the kitchen to get a few things.
Nicole began down the lengthy stairs descending into hell, ending at the same utility juncture she found the first time. She walked with determination and speed, this time passing the rooms she searched before and ignoring the details to get to whatever was at the end of the seemingly endless tunnel of flickering orange lights and pipes. Her focus on the goal blocked out everything around her until she reached the end of the tunnel, where the red brick divider wall and the stone wall on the right abruptly became dark black, red brick flooring, and an arched top of rusted metal with old black paint chipping off in spots. She could hear water running behind the metal, and the green mildew at the edges where it didn’t quite seal.
After a jog and a short series of stairs almost designed to disorient your elevation and direction, the stone lightened a bit and branched off. It looked similar to the last location where Dee had joined, but she could never be sure.
She chose the arched sewer décor, passing several empty rooms and sudden starwells going down into the void, determined this level was the one she wanted, or perhaps needed. She spotted a room that looked less empty, investigating it.
A series of marble countertops and unknown scientific devices covered them, not old and rusted but oddly fresh, some closed containers even still containing transparent liquids or powders. The doorway had a rubber seal around it, and the lighting was far bluer. On the far wall was a cooler, a small lab type fridge with conduit and tubes running from it, the subtle hum of the compressor running, and the flow of air from it’s top vent.
Several thin copper pipes descended from the ceiling, all snaking their way to either metal drums on the ground or the cooler of mysterious containers. Her heart seemed to stop and sink when she leaned in to read the labels on the tubes and the containers they went to. Several names, mostly unfamiliar aside from the last one on the right labeled “Nicole” with a disturbingly crisp and freshly printed sticker.
“Is it all in your head?” she whispered to herself. Trying to blink and make the label change to anything else, and it didn’t. She heard a clunk, and went silent as something walked past one of those horrid little holes in the walls; this place seemed to be riddled with them. The same ones always at eve level, or the ankle-level ones large enough to get an arm through. She grabbed one of the small metal tins in the case under her name and pocketed it before leaving the room. She needed to see what was above.
She hurried down the hall, unsnapping her gun holster and noticing the little wooden closet door too small for a monster to fit through, and opened it to see a ladder down to anywhere but where she was. She climbed down and hopped the last few feet to a damply flooded floor, half an inch of water, presumably warm. She needed to go up. One floor above where the vials were, and it seemed as though every few feet changed direction, corridor size or style, like some kind of badly merged video game level that overlapped another one, over and over, until the game was broken. Or perhaps she was broken, and this was just a game. Finally she found the curved stone steps leading what she believed was to the correct floor. Her sense of where the vial room was, was now entirely guessing, and she could hear the hoof steps faintly from the previous floor.
She paused for a moment, in confusion at the change in surroundings, moving again as she remembered she was being pursued. Now resembling a hotel from the 70’s, fake brown and red pattered tile floor, the stone brick walls painted drab and muted colors and the dungeon-like arches now framed doorways. She expected to hear jazz music and smell the scent of cigarettes and gin as she made her way around dead ended room and unlevel halls. Some rooms were almost decently lit but with no known light sources to be found aside from the orange bulbs in the hallways, and there she saw it…the long corridor with the slight bend just so subtle that it almost impeded the view but allowed a narrow visible slit from the end to the far end, just like the one below her. It was close by.
Her mind raced as she kept trying to decide of the hoofsteps were below her or on the same level, getting further or close, seeming to overlap and pass several times. Halfway down the corridor it split into 4 ways, each hall halfway misaligned from the one it merged into and though she needed to go forward she hesitated and looked to either side. To the right, an open wooden door with what looked like a row of books. And to the left a hallway that changed styles yet again and tapered a thousand yards into nothingness, and standing at the far end of the transition was a dark figure, roughly the height of the hallway, hunkered down to clear it, the fray of silhouetted antlers that turned her direction.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
“Fuck.” She whispered, darting to the right, closing the door and hoping it had a lock. She slammed it shut and pulled the heavy locking bar, almost amazed she was on the correct end of one of these doors for a change. However, the sudden shutter of something impacting it made her question the holding power of the lock or hinges. The door shuttered again in an aggressive pattern of rams, followed by a gruff animalistic sound.
“Don’t run little human.” It growled in Kraken’s gravely voice.
“What do you want from me?” she asked.
“Don’t you understand? Your human females are infecting our Delmarian homes like rodents. The only way to rid of rodents is to flush them out.” He said, followed by the creaky turning of a water valve. She could hear the soft flowing of water as it made its way under the doorway.
“Delmarians can’t swim.” She yelled back.
“Not many. Some of us can…You doubt the Kraken is afraid of a little water? I assure you I can swim well. Delmarians can hold their breath for up to 40 minutes. Can you do either?” he asked.
She ran from room to room through the odd sort of library, past a seating area, another wall mounted TV, a room that at a glance looked to have a noose hanging in the middle, and finally to a dead end room with one of the heavy doors that only went INTO the room, she turned back to the seating room and up the stairs, praying it wouldn’t just end as well, trapping her in a library-themed flooding tomb. She passed a large skull tapestry and spiraled to a smaller room above the center that had one doorway, the handles on the other side.
“No.” she whispered. “It’s not fair.” She looked down and noticed the glass table in the room’s center, and the glass square below that, peering down into the room below. The sound of wood cracking in the distance told her she had limited time to think before this would be a final resting place. She began kicking the table leg, breaking it free from its spot on the floor, and she smashed the glass viewing hole with the nearby wooden chair, now just an open hole with a ten foot drop into water and broken glass, which seemed far less terrifying than it should have. The wooly figure passed across it, never looking up. She readied her gun, listening as the hooves creaked and bent the wooden stairs spiraling to the top room. Just as antler became visible, she sat down on the edge and waited.
He turned the corner, staring at tiny Nicole, on the edge of the opening, pointing a gun at him. She stomped one hoof forward and she pulled the trigger. The round struck center chest with a metal clang and an unexpected flash of fire, not from the gun but the impact area, startling her and falling down the hole. She caught herself in a stumble, narrowly missing the broken glass as her knee luckily bent the right direction and her back hit the water. She stood up, just glad to be standing and still have air above her mouth.
“What the hell are these bullets?” she gasped, realizing she had a pocket full of pointable grenades rather than a standard magazine. The gun was soaked…would that matter? An arm slammed down through the opening, clad in black painted metal armor. He wasn’t getting through the opening, but he could go around and clearly these rounds weren’t going to stop him that easily. She fired another one, clanking off the plate armor and deafening her with another ball of fire. She ran back through the main library door, back down the hall where the vials were being collected, sloshing knee deep and unsure of her footing.
She half expected to find some version of herself hanging on the wall, being drained by tubes or bleeding out. At this point her mind was creating the worst things she could imagine. She found the room, knowing it was the right spot and she closed the door behind her, latching it the moment she noticed the other exit door partially opened, just enough to get through. Not a dead end at least.
Jack jogged through the halls, combat knife in hand and really wishing he had a gun right now, the familiar echo of explosions from somewhere. His boots soaked as water dripped from seemingly everywhere at once. A part of him was glad at least she had a gun, but with standing water this far in, the tunnels going deeper would only have more, and what was she firing at? What was down there with her? He stopped, seeing a small figure in the dark walking his way.
“Nicole, thank god I found you let’s get.” He stopped, noticing the glowing blue eyes and the silvery white hair. “She’s down here, help me find her, do you have a weapon?” he ask as sort-of Gizzy casually strolled into the light with no form of rush or fear.
“Jack, let her go.” She said.
“Bullshit, this place is flooding and she’s firing at something. She’s scared.
“She is exactly where she needs to be. You on the other hand, were not supposed to be here.”
“She put a screwdriver in the doorway to keep it open. She wanted me to follow her.”
“Clever, I admit, but a mistake I knew was possible. Let her go Jack.
“I can’t just let her die down here.”
“She won’t. I assure you” She promised.
“So the rumors are true? You’re running human experiments down here and Nicole is just a lab rat for your amusement. You plan to waterboard her for fun?”
“A voluntary participant in an experiment with a far greater purpose than you know, and though unpleasant, temporary and necessary. She will be fine, Jack. Trust me.”
“How? She can’t swim. How can I let my friend fight for her life in her worst nightmare and just turn back?
“She’s fighting for her freedom, not her life. The situation is under control, do not fuck this up, I won’t allow it even if you try.” She said flashing a holster, the kind with a dart gun. You are going back one way or another, either me dragging your unconscious ass out of here, or you turning back willingly. Select your exit and carefully weigh the consequences of what you choose.” Said the haunting voice, as the eyes circled him.
“The bruise on her leg that day she met you…you injected her with something, some mind altering drug or microchip to drive her insane, didn’t you?”
“Jack I don’t think you understand how this works. The implant does not call to her. It does not MAKE her do anything. The chip allows her to feel the tunnels, and when they unlock. It lets her hear the water, nothing more. She can ignore it, but she doesn’t. I am not brainwashing her to go inside, I am not puppeting her against her will. She agreed to this, she just doesn’t remember doing it. She can’t or the experiment doesn’t work. The danger is minimal but the fear needs to be real. She is going down here of her own free will and she doesn’t know why. She does it because she needs the water she fears so much. She craves it, and she wants to know what lies beneath it. She needs to finish the scary movie, Jack. That’s something in Nicole, not something in the implant. That is WHY we chose her. I’m not torturing her, I’m giving her the tools to torture herself and studying why she does it. I didn’t break Nicole, I found her broken, and I’d like to know how to fix her too. I just have less gentle tools than the doctors, and mine do a better job in less time, and time is something we don’t have enough of. You’re trying to understand the game, the game is simple: to let her find her way. Let her go, soldier. This is not your mission.” She ordered.
With a tear in his eye he looked down at the knife, realizing it meant nothing, sheathing it andlooking back.
“Promise me she will be okay. Look me in the eyes with those dead mechanical substitutes and tell me she will be okay. MAKE ME believe you.”
“Make yourself believe in her. The monsters aren’t real, but the water is rising. She knows the way…all she needs to do is swim. Do you have so little faith in your friend or in me?”
“Fine.” He said fighting tears, tossing the knife. “You win, you always win. You’re always right aren’t you? You better believe that yourself.” He snipped, turning back and sloshing towards the beginning.
“Good boy…Oh and Jack…” she hollered. “13th and Raible street, perhaps you and Vinn need to have a drink at the bar, and I would hurry.” She said.
He sprinted down the path as Gizzy calmly waited in the darkness.