Chase wasn’t sure how long he and Jessica sat there stock-still after what felt like the tenth life-changing revelation in the past day. He knew it was far from a sure thing, but he’d learned to trust his gut over years of chasing leads, and it was screaming at him now. He was ninety percent sure it was because of the footage and not due to the sudden onset of scurvy or malnutrition.
“Jess?” Chase gently prodded. “Talk to me, Jess. I know we keep finding new things to shatter our worldview, but that just means we can remake it as a tasteful stained glass exhibit to put up in that renovated warehouse downtown.”
Jessica stirred, blinking rapidly. “What? Are you just trying to baffle me with bullshit so I don’t think about the implications of what we just saw?”
“Is it working?”
“Much to my shame, a little bit.” She shivered. “I know we can’t exactly do anything about it, but knowing that’s what we look like every night, it’s horrifying.”
“We’re gonna get to the bottom of it.” Chase surprised himself with the amount of confidence and conviction in his voice. “It’s barely been fourteen hours, and look how much we’ve found out so far! Isn’t it better to know what we’re up against? I know I like this version of Jess better than the one who wouldn’t come out of her room for three days.”
“That version of Jess was terrified. This one is too, she’s just taking a page out of Chase’s book and masking it with gumption and bravado.”
“Those are my two best pages! That’s it, I’m reporting you for plagiarism. Your academic reputation will never recover!”
Jess laughed. “See, that right there? That’s the difference between the Jess of a couple days ago and the one now. This one can’t mope around because she needs to come up with a good retort for that. I’m thinking something about how good artists copy and great artists steal, think it would work?”
Chase rubbed his chin in an exaggerated thinking pose. “You possess the seed of a good comeback, but you must nurture it, prune its leaves like a tiny bonsai and let it grow into the proper shape.”
“Your humble student requests instruction, sensei.” Jess deadpanned, bowing her head mockingly. “Ready to get back to it?”
“Yeah, alright. Serious faces back on.” They turned back to the monitor. “Any other footage you think we should check?”
“Let’s see if there are any external cameras. All this weirdness is probably connected, I want to see what happens to the glow globe when the blank 34 rolls around.”
“Is it bad if I really hope it’s nothing? My gumption tanks are in dire need of a refill.”
“Shut up and watch the video.”
“Yes ma’am.”
The camera Jess had chosen faced out directly above the main entrance of the lab, where fifty feet away the world dissolved into bubbling, shifting patterns of green, blue, and purple. It would have been beautiful if it was swirling around the sky at night above a snowy mountain range, but these faux northern lights landed firmly on the side of eerie. Chase mused that he would have thought it was freaky even if it wasn’t imprisoning them all simply by virtue of being vertical; there was just enough definition in the shifting patterns to discern the curve of the dome they created to seal in the lab.
There was much less to see in this video, and Jess quickly skipped to the last minute. Once more, there were two seconds recorded past 12:26 AM, and both of them were holding their breath as the fateful seconds approached… and promptly passed without anything discernable happening to the shimmering dome.
Chase blinked. “Well that’s unexpected.”
Jess stared at him. “Nothing happening is unexpected?”
“Compared to the last few things we’ve investigated? Yeah, nothing happening is very unusual. Are there other cameras facing the outside?”
Jess clicked through a few menus. “Only a handful of exterior cameras, mostly around the entrances. You really think there’s something on one of them?”
Chase shrugged. “I think it can’t hurt to check as long as we’re here, and nothing changing with the dome at the same time that so many things are changing inside of it feels off to me.”
“Fair point. We might as well be thorough. But I’m blaming you when we discover something freaky.”
“You’d blame me anyway.”
“Well obviously.”
The next two videos were exactly the same as the first, with no noticeable changes in the patterns or brightness of the outer dome. It was on the third that they finally hit on something interesting.
“It’s white.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Yes, yes it is.”
It was only one of the many shifting lines, but the stark white contrasted against the surrounding greens and purples made it incredibly obvious to spot. The fact that it had been blue a second before just drew the eye even more.
“Where was that camera facing again?” Chase asked.
“Looks like the employee parking lot. Do you think that position is important?”
“Probably not, but this is my first paranormal investigation. The ghosts of aurora borealis past are mysterious creatures, their motives not fully understood.”
“It’s not a ghost.” Jessica said stubbornly. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
Chase gave her a flat look. “Jess, we’re trapped in a lab by the northern lights and the date rolls back every night when we lose 34 minutes of time and we’re very likely being kept here deliberately. You’re drawing the line at ghosts?”
“The line has to be drawn somewhere and I choose to draw it at ghosts.”
Chase raised a finger to object, but nothing came to mind. That was actually sort of reasonable. They couldn’t go off chasing every one of his weird ideas, and if it did turn out to be ghosts later he could rub her face in it. Before they both probably died or got possessed. On second thought, maybe he’d let her have that one.
“So… I guess we’re done here? We can probably come back anytime, Bobby didn’t seem like he cared too much what we got up to.” Chase said.
“I guess so. It’s still only 3 o’clock, do we just wander around until the meetup at 7?”
“Unless you can think of something else we need to check on here, I feel a strong need to stretch my legs.”
Jess paused, seemingly psyching herself up. “Well if I can make a request, can we do that stretching outside?”
That was not what Chase was expecting. Intellectually, he knew that the outdoors still existed, insofar as about fifty feet of distance from the front entrance counted as the outdoors. Chase supposed that there were at least a few decorative trees and some patches of grass within that distance, provided the lack of natural sunlight hadn’t wilted them. Even if it had, they could be on the list of things that got reset every night. On the other hand, they were living, and people seemed to be immune to the full reset… well now Chase was curious.
“Sure, it’d be good to get some fresh air. Figuratively speaking. Huh, air is probably another one of those weird exceptions Tom was pointing out, maybe there’ll even be a breeze.”
“I don’t think we’re that lucky. It’ll be room temperature like everything else.”
“Eh, probably so. Still worth checking. I assume you want to check out the area near the employee lot, see if there’s any trace of our ghost?”
“Still not a ghost. But yeah, plus I haven’t been outside since this whole thing started. Which is understandable with it looking like the world’s worst acid trip out there, but I still miss it.”
“Yeah.” Chase couldn’t help but agree. He missed the sky. They exited the archive room only to come across Bobby asleep in his chair, letting out incongruously delicate snores for such a huge man. Chase rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t help but wonder. The brief bits of footage from the break room painted a picture, that they were being changed, molded bit by bit every night into some kind of role. Just who was Bobby before he’d been trapped here? Had he always been the stereotype of the lazy security guard? Was he still the same Chase that had begrudgingly agreed to take this article assignment as a favor to Raymond? His thoughts must have shown on his face, because Jess interrupted them quickly once they’d left the sleeping guard behind.
“We’re gonna figure it out.” She spoke firmly. “We just have to keep asking the right questions.”
Chase grinned. “Well I don’t know if this is the right question, but it is a question. What’s your favorite memory?”
Jess tilted her head, clearly not expecting the question. “Um, off the wall but alright.” Her voice took on a wistful tone. “I was 8, and I was a very excitable and easily distracted 8-year-old. We’d apparently been assigned a science project at some point and I’d completely missed it until the teacher reminded us the day before it was due. I came home panicking, bawling to my mom that I was gonna fail and have to become a janitor. That was the worst thing I could think of at that age, I hated cleaning. My mom took one look at me and declared that no daughter of hers would fail a science project. She stayed up half the night with me making borax crystals and putting together a report. The next day when we took those crystals out of the jar, they were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. I must have made my mom make more with me and explain it all to me seven or eight times after that. Never missed another science assignment after that, which may have all been part of mom’s cunning plan. Certainly got me to be a chem major.”
“Your mom sounds great.” Chase said sincerely.
“She really is. We used to talk every day before all this. It’s what I miss the most.”
They had reached the doors to the employee lot area by this point, and silently pushed them open. The scintillating glow of the dome washed across their faces as they stepped outside. There was no marked difference in temperature or the usual rush of air that any normal environment would bring, just a brightening of the glow and a distinct eerie feeling. Chase felt a phantom itch over every inch of exposed skin on his arms and face. He instantly understood why no one wanted to spend much time outdoors. It wasn’t exactly easy to ignore all the weirdness cooped up in the lab’s inner confines, but you weren’t forced to confront something unnatural head-on.
Jess stopped a few steps outside the door and stared intently at the spot they’d seen the white stripe intersect the ground. Chase followed her gaze, squinting, but he couldn’t make out anything between the distance and the shifting glow of the forcefield. He took another step forward before a tug on his wrist forced him back a half-step. Jessica’s eyes hadn’t moved from where they’d been staring for the past minute, but she took a deep breath and moved her hand down to grasp his before stepping forward to stand shoulder to shoulder with Chase. It didn’t make the feeling of wrongness go away, but it definitely made it less intense.
Chase gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and they both took another step forward, inching towards the glowing wall bit by bit. By now Chase’s skin was definitely itching, and it was starting to spread up his arms to his shoulders. It felt like there were thousands of ants crawling over slightly sunburnt skin, constant tiny pinpricks of something that wasn’t quite pain, but definitely went beyond discomfort. Only his left palm seemed immune, nestled as it was in Jessica’s right.
The two of them finally stopped an arm’s length from the shimmering barrier that was now bright enough to leave spots and afterimages in Chase’s eyes. That’s what he thought he was seeing at first as he looked toward the ground. Surely there couldn’t be something so out of place nestled up against the edge of the barrier. But no matter how many times he blinked and told himself it was some kind of optical illusion, the small gilt-edged picture frame still laid there innocuously.