Episode 20
“Sharp!” cried Kyle. “We can’t open the door from the hallway. It’s too hot to unlock. Get into the resource…”
If Kyle finished his sentence, Sharp didn’t take notice. Dark filaments from the wormhole were passing through the containment walls to connect with the exit. Some connected with the rolling sheet door on the opposite side of the room, but most were gathering at the small door within a door, which surged with light at one moment, then dimmed darkly at the next.
“What is happening‽” Sharp yelled out. Any chance of hiding in the restroom ended as gravity began to pull Sharp towards the door. He clung to the safety railing while his feet lifted into the air. Other objects in the room such as manuals and tarps took flight. Some battered the wormbox; the remainder passed into the pulsating hole that used to be the exit.
The burgundy and purple filaments between the wormbox and the door became thick as ropes as the wormhole exceeded the boundaries of its ALON containment and began to illuminate the smoke-filled room. In the back of the room, the main WMD machinery thrummed and banged. Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! It reminded Sharp of an MRI.
He had noticed the magnetic coils at the wormbox in the middle of the room, but it made sense to him that there were other magnets at work in the main apparatus. What he didn’t expect was to hear the sound of tinkling bells as if in the distance, like weather chimes on a porch, as well as an alarmed shout coming from his only way out.
Somebody must be in the hallway. Maybe they were trying to open the door.
The rhythmic MRI-like noise rose in pitch and frequency until it sounded like a washing machine in a feverish spin cycle, while the hum from the wormbox became a whine. One of Sharp’s shoes began to pull off his foot. Then the noise, lightshow, and gravitational pull stopped abruptly while the doorway belched out matter from the hallway. Sharp fell to the floor while still holding onto the railing and lost his breath in surprise.
The room was strangely silent with the only sound a ringing in Sharp’s ears. All lights in both rooms were snuffed out along with the intercom when the emergency shutdown protocols cut the power. Red emergency lights flickered on, flooding the smoke-filled room with an eerie mood.
Well, that was fun. I guess I got to see wormhole tech nice and close. Let’s not do that again.
Sharp bent over to pull his shoe back on, and noticed rumpled clothing of some kind had been blown over to him. He picked it up and flipped it front and back. It appeared to be an old-fashioned skirt made of frilly satin.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
What’s this doing here? Was there a storage room on the other side of the hall outside? What were they keeping in there? Cosplay?
The idea of somebody storing cosplay outfits in the other hallway storage room didn’t surprise Sharp after what he had seen they had done with the “server” room. Moving closer to the dimly lit door, he stepped over damaged books, old photos, and papers with mathematical equations written on them. They stood out starkly on the high quality paper bathed in red. Sharp reached down to examine some of the papers.
This paper’s so thick. Who scribbles notes on heavyweight stationary? Wait. What’s this? A diaper?!
Sharp stooped down again to pick up what he could clearly see now were women’s bloomers. The floor was littered with them, along with blouses and skirts.
The wormbox was silent, and although the wormhole itself had disappeared, the magnetic coils still smoldered. A line of glowing embers burned its way in the darkness toward the back of the room, marking the cable bundle that connected to the WMD in the back. The air was filled with the acrid scent of burnt ozone, yet Sharp could also smell vanilla and butterscotch.
What am I smelling? Scones?
Tossing the bloomers aside, Sharp carefully approached the exit. The smoke was thickest on this side of the room, but he could make out the darkened rectangle of his escape in the blood red haze. He should have been excited to exit this madhouse. He should have been counting the moments until he could walk into his apartment, kick off his shoes, fire off his two-week notice, then begin his mad binge to bring Crypt Defender to life, generate some cash, and change the world with his new AR tech. That was the plan.
But something troubled him.
Not only could he not see any red emergency lights revealing the hallway beyond, but what he could see didn’t look like a hallway. It looked deeper. It looked like there was no hallway.
Sharp rubbed at his eyes and squinted into the dark.
Where's the hallway? That looks like more clothes. Lots and lots of clothes.
Standing now at the doorway to his freedom, he could see another room beyond. The red emergency lights behind him didn’t penetrate into that darkness. It was a space further than the hallway. Shadows played with flickering, yellow lights deep inside, as if the room was illuminated by candlelight. Then a dark silhouette stood in front of the other doorway, blocking out the warm lights. It paused for a moment, and Sharp could hear its heavy breathing. Then it moved towards him.
It stepped over the items littering the space between them while it dragged something long and dark behind it. The red emergency lights began to fill in more details from the inky shadows. Long, cascading hair. Ears that protruded from the side of its head. A robe bathed in red. As it lifted a long, menacing blade with both its hands, the red light danced off its polished horns, and its eyes reflected white in the darkness, like a beast caught in headlights.
Yet Sharp was the one feeling caught in headlights. His brain couldn't process what it was seeing. For a moment, he was frozen in denial that the hallway wasn't where it should have been, but the silhouette drew closer. He stepped backwards by reflex. Then the silhouette shouted.
“What are you doing in my dressing-closet!”