Professor Kotkas only awoke because somebody was banging hard on the door to his apartment. His first glance was at the dial of an old alarm clock with the radium paint on hour marking and hands still offering some illumination. It was the fourth hour in the morning. It was a dark night and he could hear a thunderless rainstorm outside his window. Then the noise started again which startled Jaan from his idyllic semi-sleep and finally made him get up. He turned on the light, grabbed his robe, put on his slippers and headed towards the door.

He quickly opened the door and froze. In the hallway in soaked clothing and hair still dripping with water, there stood the familiar girl in black, her hand risen, ready for continuing to knock on the door. In her eyes there was a tired and annoyed glint.

“Mariann.” The Professor said, having forced down his incensed mood. “Do you know what time it is?”

“I do. I know far too well.” The girl replied in a tired voice. “I have something to show you. Can I come in?”

Her voice and the demanding demeanor did not allow the Professor to continue contemplating the question. He stepped aside and let the girl in. She produced a small transistor radio with a cassette player tightly packed in a plastic bag. Without taking off her boots, she unpacked the radio from the plastic bag covered with water droplets and put the power cable into the wall socket.

“What happened? I haven’t seen you in three days and now suddenly...”

“I haven’t slept in three days.” The girl said. “An opportunity has presented itself to us.” She produced an audio cassette from her jacket pocket. “An opportunity, if we were to let it go by, we would definitely regret.”

She put the tape in, turned up the volume and pressed play. A deafening white noise from the airwaves filled the apartment wiping the last inklings of getting back to sleep from the Professor’s mind. All kinds of interference noises, squeaks, beeping, trilling, screams that sounded neither biological nor mechanical. The Professor could only be thankful that the building in which his apartment was, was mostly uninhabited and thus there were no other neighbors on this floor or above who would be disturbed by this noise.

Suddenly, the noises from the airwaves stopped, as if they were switched off and for a while only faint rustling of green noise could be heard. And then a mechanical monotonous female voice started counting numbers.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, null.”

“You found a numbers station?” The Professor asked.

Mariann who was still bent over the radio, only raised her index finger and directed a sharp glance at the Professor.

As soon as the female voice had finished counting the numbers, a short beep in sine tone was heard and then they could hear a familiar male voice saying those very familiar words over a phone line with 8 kilohertz sample rate.

“That’s the reason, I remained because I thought I would go there early-early-early-early...”

After this, the female voice continued with “three, six, two one.”

After these final four numbers, the airwaves fell quiet again to the floor of faint green noise. A few seconds after that, the usual white noise full of signal interference was switched on again as if nothing weird had happened.

Mariann stopped the tape.

“This recording was made...” She raised her hand and pushed the wet sleeve up revealing a watch a little too big for her wrist. “Now 27 minutes ago. This means we have 5 hours and 35 minutes remaining to get something done.”

“Okay, could you start at the beginning please?!” The Professor said.

She straightened herself up with an annoyed face.

“The airwaves are thick with all sorts of interference signals and jamming. That’s the only reason most normal radio communication is impossible. Very powerful transmitters and the right weather conditions are required to cut through the noise and to cover the whole region and maybe even reach further. And even then, half of Valgepalõ needs to be blacked out to feed the transmitters. If people in Tontla want to know the morning news on Valgepalõ radio, then the most economic way is to go and get the tapes.

“Now, I’ve been monitoring the airwaves for a while and we have maybe seven or eight different noise signals on the air. Because of that, it is very unusual if all those transmitters suddenly fall silent to let through one special signal. This is my first point.

“My second point is that repeating sentence which was once uttered in that single phone booth in town. At first I only thought that it had burnt into the airwaves and was now circling along the field lines of the magnetosphere powered by some strange force. That because of this, it is untouched by the local noise which disallows the signal from most radio stations from here or elsewhere. But that was not correct. Or to be more precise, that is not all. A numbers station of some sort has picked up this segment from the air and is now using it to signify a fulfillment of a certain condition. Everything is automated and there’s probably nobody left on the outside who knows that such a station here is active or that it’s predictions have any merit to them.”

“Okay, this is a long story you just told me but I’m still not getting what you’re talking about.” The Professor said. “What condition?”

“It sends out a notification when a super secret research lab called Mir-8 becomes accessible. In this case, the access exists for 362 minutes since the ending of the notification.”

“What’s a Mir-8?” Jaan continued asking, still weighing in his mind whether all this justified ruining his sleep.

“Russian research laboratory, which during some periods swallowed the whole output of the Center Station’s generators. If you want to know what’s going on with the world, we should get as fast as possible to the cottage district under which the Mir-8 lies. Tentatively speaking.”

“Tentatively speaking?”

“I will continue after you put your clothes on.”

“Can we not wait for the next time?”

“The time between the access periods has been increasing slowly but surely. Months may pass until such an opportunity comes upon us again. And then too it may occur in the middle of the night.”

“What do you mean by ‘tentatively’?” Jaan repeated his question.

The girl did not reply him, only stared at him with her penetrating gaze until he finally started dressing.

*

“This is your car?” Jaan asked, stopping under awning on the main staircase.

Only a step further, there was a powerful downpour capable of soaking every item of clothing under a second. Another five steps further right by the sidewalk a massive red two-door car bathed in dark shadows.

“In it, I can sleep and listen to the nighttime rain. I don’t need much else.” The girl said. “Red leather is also quite nice.”

Ignoring the rain, Mariann unhurriedly stepped down the stairs, walked around the car and opened the driver side door.

“Seems to be of a same era as my two-door.” The professor said after he quickly followed the girl and had sat into the cool car.

“A bit older. “The girl said. “But the engine is the same.”

With a quiet low burble, the car started and a whole array of little incandescent bulb lit up both on a colored idiot light panel in the dashboard as well as yellow bulbs behind knurled transparent plastic panels, the latter of which filled the interior of the car with warm yellow light. Mariann took off and let the car roll through the potholes on the street. Water kept splashing onto the windscreen, reducing visibility to zero but she seemed to not care at all.

“Damn rain.” She only said. “It started right after the radio transmission had finished. It is quite possible that the Mir-8 facility or some of it’s local support systems are affecting the local weather.”

“What did you mean by ‘tentatively?’” Jaan again repeated his question. “You said that Mir-8 is accessible. ‘Tentatively.’”

“It means...”

The girl turned onto the circular road that surrounded the whole town, and struggled slightly with an unexpected slide due to the heavy rain.

“...that the facility is accessible through the post office located in the Cottage district. However that does not mean that it is physically located beneath the post office.”

“Where is it located then?” Jaan asked. “If not at the place it is accessible from…?”

“Where…?” A smile smile floated on the girl’s lips. “Who even remembers that? Maybe it has never been located anywhere and has always been intermittently accessible. Just that in the past, this period of accessibility has been so long that people have mistaken it for presence. But now, when the access itself and the thing it accesses are no longer controlled, the existence of the object has become unstable.”

“Unstable?” Professor muttered, in thought. “Could you start from the beginning why this laboratory is important?”

“In the simplest of terms, Mir-8 is an intersection facility, in charge of managing access to other facilities. Among which there are the Center Station, the Underground Base and the Combine. But also the Valgepalõ mine, The Route and the 4th Town. These latter facilities have no other accesses besides Mir-8. In theory, Mir-8 could also access the lost sections of the Institute, if only one knows the parameters required to access them.”

“I know of the Center station, the Underground base and the Combine. But I have never heard of the Mine, the Route and the 4th Town.”

“The Mine is located on the other side of the concrete wall in the Cottage district and the forest beyond the wall.” Mariann explained. “It looks like the phosphorite and uranium argillite mines of Northern Estonia, but of the actual resources to be mined, there is a suspicious lack of. The devil only knows what they really mined there, but at one point the Russian military blocked it off and explosively collapsed all tunnels leading underground. According to some rumors, it was all leveled later with remotely controlled bulldozers.”

“Remote-controlled dozers?” The professor asked. “The only place I have heard of radio-controlled equipment is...”

“Chernobyl.” She finished his sentence. “And the irradiating lake of the Mayak production company. There probably was something in that mine. Something mysterious and dangerous. We may never know. Unless we go to Mir-8.” Mariann gave a small smile. “The 4th Town is as it sounds. If we imagine this region seen up high, then the Nameless Town is the Northern-most. Tontla and Valgepalõ are slightly to the South and off to the sides. And the 4th Town would be at the bottom peak of this diamond. At least in theory.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.” Jaan said.

“But the problem is that there are only two kinds of maps: Those which have the 4th Town marked on them in all of it’s Stalinist beauty but with no directions or a way to get there. On the maps of the second kind, there are the rest of the three towns and all the roads but not a mark of the 4th Town. Although according to old stories it should be no more than 10 kilometers as the crow flies from Tontla or Valgepalõ. And there’s something else, something that goes beyond the stories. There exists a small Soviet Era picture book of postcard photos of architecture and other points of interest in the 4th Town. Some of the village hags even remember visiting the 4th Town but nobody remembers these days how they got there.”

“The 4th Town must certainly have it’s own secret purpose?” Jaan asked.

“All towns in this area did. According to the rumors, some sort military industrial institute, an OKB was located there. Best known for something called Project 62. However the name of the town, the name of the institute or what Project 62 was all about, these are the things one can no longer learn.”

Mariann fell silent again, just for a moment though.

“The Route is the most mysterious of the three. Nobody knows anything about that. Even I don’t know so I cannot tell you unbelievable stories about that place.”

The professor directed his gaze through the windscreen, realizing he could not tell the sky from the forest or the pastures. The rain was coming down with the same unyielding strength and the wipers could only barely clear away the water. There was no moon, he could see no stars and it felt like the headlights on the car only illuminated a couple of meters of road in front of them. It was clear that this was no usual nighttime darkness, instead it was that infamous living darkness or dark fog that sometimes came up in conversation at the bar. Darkness which acted like light, like a very fine black mist which could turn the most powerful spotlight as useless as a scratched up flashlight.

Despite that, the girl did not decrease the speed she was driving at.

“How can you see in this darkness?” Jaan asked.

“I’m not seeing, I am sensing the road.” The girl said. “I know this area so well that I could drive at night with my eyes closed. But if you want to feel comfortable...”

Mariann ran her fingers under the dashboard and the next moment blinding source of light illuminated at nose of the car. Bright clinically white beam pierced through the darkness and scared the black mist away from everywhere around them. It was as bright as with regular high beams on a clear night.

“What the hell kind of searchlights are these!?” The professor exclaimed.

“Modules of light-emitting diodes.” Mariann said. “Not long ago I found a car on the side of the road, which had been used by one of the bands arriving in town. It had two light bars as wide as the grilles. I took them and put the behind the grille on my car. That darkness flowing out of the Underground Base at night eats away all the light that a halogen or even a gas discharge bulb produces, but it cannot digest this light. At least not yet.”

“You think it’s gonna get… darker?”

“I am certain of it.” She said. “The whole world is alive. The Underground Base is also alive in some sense. It may take a week or two, but the darkness will adapt to the light from these diodes and then they will fail to illuminate anything like the rest of the lighting. Next to the car it will seems as if you were looking into the sun, but the light from it won’t even reach the ditch by the side of the road. And then there’s that other problem.”

“What other problem?”

“The tone on the light-emitting diodes is wrong. The nature and the life forces in this place are not willing to tolerate it. Usually, the darkness is scary because it seems that there are things in the night which the eye cannot see but the senses can perceive. But bright light like this will bring them all out, every shadow creature and spirit being who usually lurk in the corner of the eye. This kind of revelation however will make a person fear the dark even more. It ruins his contact with this place and the nature here so that the night and the darkness really do become dangerous for him. That’s the reason I do not want to use these light-emitting diodes.”

“You mean to say that a burning fire or powerful halogen lights are fine, but xenon or LED is not?”

“Yes. Luminescence is also not. That’s why the Russians kept walking around in the night as if this was some inhabited alien planet. So much heavy weaponry unable to provide the slightest amount of security or comfort. The color temperature of the lamps mimicking natural daylight was wrong, and from the darkness it brought out both that which was there but also that which was not. There were several occurrences of the night watchman thinking he had shot some monster, which he even dragged under the spotlights of the sentry post, which the researchers and the medical techs photographed, sketched and dissected as if an alien lifeform. But when morning came and the sun dawned, suddenly it turned out to be a fellow soldier who had gone into the bushes to take a dump. With his body riddled with bullet wounds and his pants around his ankles.”

Mariann fell silent for a moment.

“Just try and explain that to your superior officer.”

Black macadam under the wheels of the car was replaced by gravel road and soon a small cluster of birches appeared at the right edge of the powerful cone of light. While straight ahead there was a small opening in the hedges into the front yard of a farmhouse. Wide right angle turn to the right towards the Underground Base was clearly visible. However before that was an even sharper turn to the left towards the cottage district, this came upon her so fast that she had slam the brakes on wet gravel road.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Sorry.” She said. “I’m used to going to the right.”

“To the Underground Base?” The professor asked.

“Yes.”

Jaan said nothing further on that. The girl felt that the true meaning of her words had gone right by him understanding. No matter. If nobody asked a question, she had no reason to talk.

The streets in the cottage district were wide and covered with black macadam. The wider street at the side of the cottage district Mariann was now approaching by was even wider, with a sidewalk on one side of the road. But this did not mean that the cottage district was inhabited. The streets were dark. In rain, the street lighting short-circuited and from between the buildings one could see only a few windows from which light still shone.

In this place there was nothing unusual about going to sleep but leaving the lights on in at least one of the rooms of the house. Electric light kept away that strange unearthly darkness which crept in even through the window glass. In addition to that, an illuminated window was a clear indicator which yard was safe for a nighttime traveler to spend the night sleeping in grass and which was not.

The cottage district was an exception in that regard. Uninhabited buildings were not as protected from the influences of the Underground Base and other mysterious forces as the inhabited buildings. If one were to fall asleep in an abandoned building, it was quite possible for the sleeping person to not wake up in the morning. This was also possible in an inhabited house if one were to kill the lights for the night. But a single fourty watt incandescent bulb burning in the outhouse was enough for a safe night.

Mariann slowed the car down. Something familiar had appeared into the beam of light. A long low four-door car. With a side profile shaped similar to a wedge, somewhat. Faded green color and collapsed tires. On the trunk lid there was a brake light almost as wide as the lid itself.

“What is it?” The professor asked.

“I remember this car.” Mariann said.

“I think it has been here for quite some time. What do you mean you remember it? You’ve seen it before? You’ve driven it?”

“No. I’m pretty sure I haven’t yet. But I remember it. That means something.”

“What?”

“Maybe the facility has also been active in the past. Or in the future. Doesn’t matter, time is cyclic. And Mir-8 breaks that. Or maybe it it possible that Mir-8 is not the prime switch, but it’s protocols can be remote-controlled. Across time and space. Maybe even with insignificant events.”

“Events which have not yet happened and that mysterious facility.” Jaan said, in thought. “Is there some connection here?”

The girl in black smiled.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I myself am still trying to make sense of it.”

“What is that Mir-8 anyway?” Jaan asked. “You never explained that clearly. The word “intersecting facility” tells me nothing.”

“I cannot explain it clearly.” Mariann said. “I’m only telling you what I see and feel. The Russians also could not speak of it clearly, only in terms they knew and understood. Earthly mathematics, protocols, signals and classifications, which only meant something for them and transformed something simple but incomprehensible into something complicated but comprehensible.”

The girl went right on the next intersection and stopped in front of the two story stone building which in no way tied architecturally with the rest of the houses in the cottage district. The walls of the stone building were vaguely brown like creamy coffee and surrounding the entrance were two white pillars on either side. Above the main entrance there was a small balcony and above that a small bell tower on the spire at the top of which there seemed to be either a red star or a hammer and a sickle. It was difficult to tell due to the darkness. There was a broken light-up lettering above the door, with only the second word “office” still readable. The letters for “post” were broken and scattered on the pavement in front of the door.

Mariann parked the car on the side of the road and killed the engine. It was still raining. Less that before, but still raining. A downpour had become a strong sprinkle and sounds of everything around them constantly dripping.

Suddenly a pale orange light appeared in the middle of the darkness. This made professor’s heart grow cold. He had heard of motion sensors, but not here, not in the Nameless Town. In here, the true reason for lights suddenly turning on or off was almost always something else.

“This not unusual here.” Mariann said. “The motion sensors the Russians left behind are exceptionally robust. It it surprising really. Everybody damns the Russian tech for it’s lousy reliability, but if you put together electrics and extreme conditions and Russian tech it is the most reliable thing to use.”

“I hope you brought something else besides your good mood.” The professor said.

Mariann gave him a disappointed glance.

“I brought you along. Because you’re the only person in this town I trust.”

“I… I have no response to that.” Jaan said, fazed.

“Of course I brought along some flashlights. Hopefully there’s no darkness from the Underground Base inside the building.”

“I only have the revolvers.” Jaan said as he opened the door.

“Very good, leave them in the car. We’ll fare better if we have no weapons.”

“You have that much experience with wandering around secret military bases?”

“Do not ask questions you do not want answered.” Mariann said and opened the trunk.

The professor had some doubts but he still dropped both of his revolvers into the trunk of the car. In their place he received a heavy flashlight with a long tube.

“This is some kind of Russian era item, huh?”

He turned the front towards his face and pressed the button. The beam of light was much more powerful than he had expected. It not only blinded him and made his eyes water but also caused a hellish amount of pain in his eyes.

“Fuck!”

He was now rubbing his eyes.

“Just an unrelated question, if I may. Do you also check whether the gun is loaded by looking into the barrel and pulling the trigger? I guess not. So why do this with a flashlight?”

“I did not expect it to be so bright!” He said, trying to get his eyes adapted to the darkness once more.

“As an answer for you, no, it is not from Russian times. This has proper rechargeable batteries and the bulb is modern halogen item with a reflector coated in real silver. This is not some cheap thing boasting the Soviet seal of quality, but it is about as reliable and foolproof.”

Mariann froze all of a sudden and raised her hands to her sides, as if trying to sense the flow of air.

“Tell me you felt that.” She said.

“Felt what?” the professor asked.

“So you did not?” She asked, with careful steps she walked away from from the car.

“What are you talking about?” The professor could not understand her.

He looked about himself, trying to notice that mysterious thing the girl had sensed. But he could see nothing. Only black broken asphalt, cottages and houses with overgrown yards and few lone lights in the distance.

“It’s a… strange feeling. As if something beneath our feet was… active. As if beneath our feet was a gigantic empty chamber the resonance of which is reaching us through the ground and the pavement.”

“An empty chamber?” The Professor asked. “Under the cottage district?”

“I don’t know. I am interpreting this feeling like that. I don’t know it it really is that. But it is clearly indicating that the ground under the post office right now is not as it is supposed to be. As it is elsewhere. Let’s go.”

She finally closed the trunk of the car and headed towards the main door on the corner of the building.

“Even if there’s some military shelter under this, such a large and grand post office for a small village like this seems a bit much.” Said Jaan.

“Stalinist tastes.” Mariann said. “Buildings of state power must be as grand as possible, even if it surrounded by dachas. Also, this was not just a post office, this also had the provincial government and district housing management. It is quite interesting that those were here, not in the Nameless Town or in Valgepalõ. Maybe the Russians felt distrustful about the Institute or the stories locals told about the Lake.”

Mariann pushed at the blacked waterlogged door and allowed the beam of her flashlight wander across the tiled floor until it found a grand staircase leading to the second floor. Somewhere in the building, wind was banging the window frames back and forth and somewhere else something metal was creaking. Both noises made the girl feel secure, familiar and at home, so much in fact she was almost about to forget why they were here. She could not explain how or why this was.

Jaan right next to her however was rattled and clearly not ready for something in a building abandoned for at least a decade to be still making such noises. Each sound made him flinch. He was a grown man with some experience in life but in this corner of the world he constantly felt as if he was back in his youth, as a little boy still afraid of the dark.

“Are you sure nobody lives here?” He asked.

“You want an honest answer to that, don’t you?” Mariann asked as she pressed water out of her hair. “That’s why I brought you along. Because you are able to listen to my honest answers and make sense of them. But we don’t have time to give that question an honest answer.”

Jaan did not say anything, only looked at Mariann with a questioning gaze.

“You want and answer? Okay.” She sighed. “There are no people here. Mice, rats, spiders, feral dogs and cats who return for the night, wild animals. I don’t know it these count. At the same time many such creatures who are not alive, technically speaking, also wander this place. Who don’t mind the animals but people… people have something that attracts them. Something they want, if not to acquire it then at least to be near it. Most are content only with being near it. Those are the ones you see lurking in the corner of your eye. And those are the ones you should fear the least.”

Suddenly a phone rang out in the cold building. That ring tore apart the silence and drowned out all other noises in the building, both in their ears but also in their minds, demanding all their attention.

“And then there’s that. “Mariann noted. “The other extreme. Just a quick heads up: it would be better if you did not answer any ringing phones in here.”

“Did not even plan to.” The professor said. “Could anybody know or suspect that we’re here?”

“No, nobody from the town.” She said. “But here is it not about the town. A ringing phone here is not the same phenomenon it is in the Institute. If in there, the phones and the wire are still present but nobody uses them, because nobody remembers the numbers, but here things are much more interesting.”

“What’s the case here then? Phones that are not connected?” Jaan asked.

“Exactly.” Mariann smiled. “And it is just about the worst idea to answer a phone which is not connected anywhere. First of all, you have no idea who wants to contact you. Secondly, while you are busy answering the phone, something might sneak up on you.”

“And third?” Jaan asked.

“Third, if something mystical is really calling you, it is better if there is some distance between you and it. If a phones has a cable, there is at least some kind of distance between the two of you.”

“Hey, isn’t there a phone booth in town which is also unconnected?”

“There is but it is connected into the airwaves. The phones here however are connected into nowhere. That’s a difference. The second difference is that here, the proximity to Mir-8 is dominating, while there, it is the Institute. In that scale, the influence of Mir-8 is considered to be bad. And that is a very important difference.”

“Why is one good and the other bad?”

“That’s a good question.” The girl smiled. “It is not a difference in morality, it is… based on how I sense things. Even the Underground Base is not as negative a place as this post office right now. Come.”

Mariann started down a hallway full of trash from Soviet times towards the left wing of the building. Jaan followed her and soon they found themselves in a small but imposing main service hall of the post offce, reaching through two stories. Service counters made of dark brown wood and tall glasses like a bank hall in the 1930s. On the floors black and white ceramic tiles, with many broken patches all across it. There was wind blowing through the broken windows on the upper floor, carrying with it droplets of mist and some dry leaves.

“Do you hear that?” Mariann asked. “The wind I mean.”

“I hear.” He said. “It seems to be getting stronger, based on the whistle.”

“Steady flow, not getting stronger, not getting weaker, not even pausing. This is not wind.”

“What is it then?”

Before she could explain anything, powerful bright searchlights turned on outside. These drew long sharp shadows onto the floor of the main hall, including some shadows which had no sources that would cast them, which then moved across the floor to merge with those shadows which had a source.

“You saw that, right?” Mariann asked. “Those fucking Russians! The were watching the airwaves! This bad! If they know how things are done here then...”

Mariann’s words was interrupted by automatic gunfire from outside. Some of the bullets broke more if the building’s windows and ricocheted off the walls and ceilings on the interior.

“The Old Gods be thanked, they did not know.” She said. “Come, access to the underground is right here.”

Suddenly the whistle of the wind outside was replaced by a loud chopping sound and the noise of a turbine engine, as if somebody had taken plugs out of the professor’s ears. This was then overshadowed by sounds of metal bending and breaking in turn followed by deafening crashing noises and then a loud explosion with powerful orange glow, which broke some more windows but also killed the searchlights outside.

“If that thing fell on my car, I’m gonna be really mad,” said Mariann.

“That was a… helicopter?” Jaan asked, surprised.

“Yes, with quite sophisticated noise reduction systems. Unfortunately, the people themselves have not developed as fast as their tech has. Still they come here with weapons and light alien to this place and then they’re surprised if things immediately go south. No difference for me.” She took an agitated sigh. “We should hurry. Just in case the moronic special forces are accompanied by somebody who can actually think.”

“You think they’re sending somebody who won’t come by a chopper?”

“Not necessarily. At least one chopper crashed, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more. Or that we don’t have air assault infantry with proper training for operations in environmentally unstable situations coming in. In any case…”

With a purposeful step she headed towards a narrow door, which Jaan had not noticed at all. She opened it. He directed the beam of his flashlight into a room full of cleaning supplies. The only noteworthy thing about the room was that it seemed to be a little too big and too prominently located to be just a storeroom. The floor was full of dirty wet rags, brushes with bristles missing or permanently bent and rust-covered metal shovels. There was even a lone gray vacuum cleaner the bellowed hose of which shattered into pieces as soon as she moved it.

Mariann however was not affected by the disappointment on Jaan’s face. She pushed all the stuff that had been near the door to the other end of the room and then used a flathead screwdriver she had pulled from her boot to pry up the ceramic tiles on the floor.

The professor felt skeptical at first, but when the tiles came off a little too easily, he was intrigued. And the tiles most definitely revealed something that in no way should have been under them. Black forged steel under a thin layer of stucco.

Carefully, she continued her work, removing more and more tiles and stucco until she uncovered big old-looking forged metal doors and heavy hinges. There were thick wires running across the doors, which ran into small clumps of concrete near the hinges and the padlocks, she had not cleared away.

“Technically speaking, this is an exit, nit an entrance.” She said and produced a keyring with keys. “The emergency accumulator packs of the facility have enough energy stored that in case of any accident, Mir-8 will be directed here and people can get home. More or less. After that, an explosive charge is triggered which breaks the tiles, the locks and the hinges, so one can exit a closed shelter.”

She unlocked and threw away both padlocks. The last lock built directly into the door allowed her to remove a panel from which she could disengage the explosive mechanism.

“Where did you get these keys?” The professor asked.

“You know what? I can no longer remember.” She said as she got up. “This area has so many different mysterious facilities and military bases that...” She sighed. “In addition, the world has been twisted into such a pretzel that… But I do remember that I found the keys long before I know what they could actually be used for.”

She opened the heavy iron doors and the beam of his flashlight revealed a dusty rust-covered steel staircase full of cobwebs. It descended several meters until it reached rough concrete floor below. Slowly she set her foot on the first step and the started to descend into darkness along the creaking staircase.

“I have never liked any stairs which cover my fingers with rust powder.” She smiled. “It just doesn’t speak of reliability to me.”

“To me, wandering old military facilities does not speak of reliability.” Jaan said. “Chemistry lab, a nuclear missile base, or an observatory, at the very least I can make sense of what they are. But here I have no idea what people were trying to do. And as an anthropologist, this aggravates me.”

“Nothing surprising in that. Those people working here also had no idea.” Her voice echoed in the darkness below. “This whole base was built on mistaken intelligence reports and some strange phenomena which were experimentally repeatable only at this general area.”

Jaan also started descending.

“What do you do if you have a phenomenon and knowledge how to bring it forth, but there is no science to explain it?” She continued. “Whether some external force you cannot isolate, which only exists here and not anywhere else, is catalyzing the appearance of the phenomenon? The fact that paranormal may become normal depending on location does not mean that the para-science explaining it turns into real science under those same conditions. In a situation like this, people would much rather research into things and discover where is the discrepancy, what is the prerequisite of this happening.”

She glanced at her watch.

“Damn it. Time’s a’wasting.”

As soon as she had set her foot on the concrete floor, a dull thump of a breaker box echoed out in the darkness and one by one, wall-mounted electric lights in watertight assemblies started turning on. The glow of the lights revealed a large underground hall which was about ten meters wide and twenty long. It was completely empty, there weren’t even any pillars to support the ceilings. Also, there wasn’t the slightest mark that this room had even been used for anything. Only knurled concrete panels for walls and black wires running across them from one light to another.

The row of lights turning on one by one finally reached the opposite wall of the hall. There, much brighter luminescent lights revealed a big gate with horizontally opening doors made of blue steel. A moment later next to the gate a large mechanical flip clock became illuminated with the white flippers counting down hours, minutes and seconds. Next to that another luminescent light revealed a semaphore with red and green light. At first both lights came on but then only green remained illuminated.

“You were right.” The professor said, looking at the dial of the flip clock with a little less than five hours still on it. “Time really is limited.”

“Isn’t it about time for you to start trusting me?” Mariann asked. “So that the next time I appear behind your door in the middle of the night and claim that the end of the world is upon us, you don’t start asking me what time it is.”

“It that a realistic possibility?” Jaan asked with a worried tone.

“I’ve been to the end of the world.” She smiled. “That should be enough of an answer.”

She walked to the big blue gate. Judging based on her own height, the gate was about three meters tall and at least as wide. The sides of the gate were covered in red and yellow high visibility striping and the door had tall red Cyrillic letters saying “Danger.” But a true peculiarity was that above the red lettering was a Nazi-German eagle grasping a wreath with a swastika.

“You said this was a Russian base. Then why is there German eagle with a swastika?”

“Did you think the Russians built it from scratch? Oh no. They also had to get rid of the original inhabitants. And what was waiting for them with experimenting with Mir-8 was everything but historic.”

“What does that mean?” the Professor asked.

“As I said before, the world and the space-time is so knotted up in this place that in some regard it even transcends the capacity of the human intelligence to make sense of it. They too did not understand, they just worked on it. They did not spend their time contemplating why the door features a swastika and why some of the hallways have hexagonal profiles.”

She pushed the red button under the semaphore. Following that orange rotating lights turned on on either side of the gate and the large door slowly slid open, half of it disappearing into the floor and the ceiling respectively. The door opening revealed a brightly lit complex with a flawless concrete, yellow railings and white floors.

If the post office and the gray concrete chamber behind them were the remnants of a forgotten world then the facility before them seemed to be brand new and never been used.

Suddenly, a deafening noise started above them. The upper part of the door jammed into the ceiling and did not disappear up there completely. An alarm started and red rotating lights in both upper and lower corners of the gate turned on.

“This is not something that would hinder us.” Mariann said, walking forward. “The doors exist only to keep people away during the brief moment the door is activating or deactivating. And of course to cover up the true nature of the facility.”

She stepped through the gate. Professor followed her, stepping onto a bright floor which seemed to have a light source underneath it. He then noticed that he was standing in the middle of a room with a total of nine such bluish gray gates arranged in a quarter circle. All of them had their doors closed, but not all had red lights illuminated in the semaphores. In addition to the jammed gate they had come from, there were three gates with green light illuminated and two gates which had neither the semaphore nor the lights surrounding the gate illuminated.

Above each gate there was a familiar flip clock with a total of fourteen digits they could display. Some were illuminated, and the flaps on the dial had black numbers on white background. Underneath the flip clock there was another similar display which displayed a name, possibly a location the gate was opened to. On the jammed gate the flip clock on this side was also counting down the seconds. On the flip display below the clock, the word “Institute” was displayed in Cyrillic lettering.

“Institute, The Route, 4th Town, Institute, The Crater, two dark ones, Door to Chthon and Sarnat.” The Professor counted in clockwise order.

His voice reflected back from the high ceilings shrouded in darkness and metal pipes of various colors. At the moment, in addition to the gate they had arrived by, only the second Institute gate, the Route and Crater were active. The last of them had a count of fourteen zeros on the clock dial.

“As I had thought,” Mariann said. “Mir-8 is no longer permanently synchronized with the Institute but rather with some other place.”

“I see there must be some other locations besides the nine here which the gates currently allow access to?” The professor asked. “And why are there two gates pointing to the Institute?”

“There is an endless amount of locations. They do not have to be on this planet nor even in this Universe. And Institute seems to be a general term not a unique location. These two gates are dark because the locations they are connected to cannot be determined at this point. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that the gates could not be opened.”

“So a gate may be opened to a place that cannot be determined?”

“Yes, come here.”

The professor walk up the stone stairs to a raised platform with all sorts of consoles set slightly to the right from the gates. The girl was pointing at the biggest display which was divided into three sections. The leftmost panel displayed a roughly ninety degree sector with nine outcroppings which was lit up in yellow. The outcropping subsections were lit with with different smaller lights: four green ones, three red ones and two blue ones. A similar sector was on the rightmost display section, but this was not illuminated, likewise unilluminated were the nine indicator lights for the presumably nine other gates. The middle section seemed like a sphere with a thick horizontal strikethrough. This section also stood unilluminated,

“There are more than nine gates here?” The professor asked.

“Not quite.” The girl said. “It is more about Mir-8 being a mirror facility. It means we don’t have only 9 gates but 9 + 9 gates. And one side of the complex is mirroring the other.”

“So in the other end of the facility, the gates are connected to the same locations...?”

“But not to the very same locations.”

Mariann looked at the Professor hoping to see understanding dawn on his face.”

“Luckily...” she turned her gaze away, “...the Russians kept details logs up until the moment they decided to abandon the complex.”

“Nine gates may be active at once, but each gate on it’s own has a total of 27 positions.” The professor said, looking at the introduction section of the log book. “So at the same time it can interface with up to nine locations out of 27.”

“Not quite. Nine gates, each with 27 positions gives us a total of 243 unique locations at once. So if they want to get to anywhere else, they have release a pre-stored location to load another one. Also, as much as I can see, the number nine is not necessarily an energetic limit but it is most definitely a mathematical limit.”

“Why 18 gates then?” Jaan asked, “is that other side a backup facility for emergency use or...”

“It is not for backup.” Mariann said. “If it was only as a backup we would not be able to talk of it as a mirror facility. One side of the mirror reflects the other. It is also of interest to me how they managed to exceed the mathematical limit and create a mirror facility.”

The placed the log book back onto the desk.

“Let’s go and take a look. We have slightly more than four hours remaining. Here.”

She pointed at the circular center section of the facility on the map displayed.

“What is there?” The professor asked.

Mariann gave a mysterious smile. “I can’t tell you, Ask me again after we have seen it. By then I probably can.”