The Realms of the Dead (5 page)

Lydia's gaze jumped from the door to the remains of the sink. The slabs of shattered porcelain could be used as weapons if it came down to it. There were a few that were roughly the size of her fist, just right for bludgeoning an aggressor. If the mirror had broken first, perhaps there were even shards of it buried beneath the rubble. Ones that could be fashioned into a makeshift knife.

“There's plenty of time to figure all this out,” she reminded herself. “You're safe. So chill the hell out.”

But she couldn't. He mind insisted that she needed to take stock, that she had to be prepared. The insistence of these instincts stimulated her pulse and breathing, each doubling in rate as she remembered her ordeal in the corridors.

“Maybe that voice—the one who called it his pet—maybe he called the thing off. To toy with me.” She thought speaking aloud might help calm her nerves, but the idea only made her more tense. The back of her neck tickled as if brushed by invisible fingers, and a new thought burst through the others crowding her mind, demanding to be heard.

Your back's to the tub. Turn around, girl, turn the fuck around now!

Lydia tried to tell herself that she was simply being childish. The woman in the tub was dead, after all, and posed no threat. Yet she couldn't shake the feeling that something was creeping up behind her; that even now a slimy hand was reaching toward her, eager to pass the chill of the dead into too-warm flesh.

Her body wanted to spin around and immediately confirm or deny this apprehension. But giving in to that impulse felt like weakness. Out in the darkness, her fear had been justified; she'd had tangible evidence of the creature's existence. But this? This was panic fighting for a stranglehold on her emotions. The sense of dread squeezing her stomach was completely
unfounded…wasn't
it?

Lydia's mind flashed back to the image of the hand rising and falling with the current. But what if the water hadn't been moving it after all? What if
it
had actually been responsible for the change in the water?

A lump formed in her throat and she forgot to breathe. Nothing else had changed. The water dripped with the regularity of a metronome. And if nothing outside the tub had caused the water to become more choppy…

She didn't want to turn around. For a cold certainty now constricted her soul: the imagined hand really
was
stretching toward
her…grasping…reaching…

But she knew she had to. Lydia's hands balled into fists so tightly that her fingernails dug into her palms as she slowly turned, dreading what she would see. She held her breath, prepared to strike the first blow if given half a chance.

But there was nothing there. Relief surged through Lydia's body, flooding her muscles with fatigue as a high-pitched giggle bubbled from deep inside, and she shook her head as her cheeks warmed with embarrassment.

“See?” She spoke aloud again, her voice tight in the wake of adrenaline. “Don't be such a damn baby.”

As if to prove something to the childish part of her that made monsters out of shadows, Lydia stepped forward and leaned directly over the bathtub. Though fear had evaporated the moisture in her mouth, she slid her tongue over her gums, trying to work up saliva so she could spit into the stagnant water. But then, just as she began to salivate, the submerged hand flexed its fingers and Lydia's scream echoed through the darkened hallways outside the room.

Chuck bolted from the couch, pulling the leads from his
instrumentation
as he scrambled across the carpeted floor. For one insane second, he thought the scream had followed him out of the Crossfade, that it had tracked him across dimensions like a hungry predator; he could still hear the voice, straining with agony, but it no longer seemed to come from deep within his own head. No, it was from a definite direction. From his left.

Nodens's hands reflexively clenched the sheets and his body arched over the cot as his neck muscles bulged. With his face screwed into a rictus of pain, the Sleeper's vocal cords rattled, the force of his scream already lending a hoarse scratchiness to the man's voice. Sweat rolled down his reddened face and the
instrumentation
behind him had gone haywire, spiking like a seismograph placed on the epicenter of a major fault line.

Chuck wanted to run to the man, to hold him down until the spasms and seizures had run their course, to inject morphine into his IV drip and somehow relieve his partner of an agony so intense that Death would seem a welcome friend. The instinct was so strong that he'd actually taken several steps toward the cot, before checking himself.

Sleepers couldn't actually feel pain. That was the whole idea behind anesthesia, after all. These were nothing more than involuntary contractions, no different than making a dead frog's leg twitch with the application of current. And the screaming? That was certainly an anomaly, but chances were that wasn't actually Nodens's voice. The man, after all,
did
act as a vocal conduit for the souls of the departed.

Even so, Chuck wanted answers. He stormed across the office until he stood just below one of the cameras, glaring up at the lens as he jabbed his finger in the air.

“What the fuck was that? Can you tell me what the Hell just happened? Please. Because I would really,
really
like to know.”

There was a moment of silence as Chuck breathed heavily through his nose. His neck and shoulders felt pinched and he flexed his hands as though squeezing invisible stress balls. Nodens's scream was abruptly cut short, and the man's body flopped back onto the cot with a thump, his readouts immediately returning to normal ranges. Though no longer yelling, the man's lips moved ever so slightly, broadcasting messages from the very realm from which Chuck had just been pulled.

Perhaps the end of the scream was a psychological cue that whatever had transpired was over; perhaps Chuck had simply been back in his body long enough to put a little distance between the events he'd experienced in the field and the calming gurgle of the Buddha fountain: whatever the reason, his heart no longer felt as though it were trying to pound its way through his chest and his breathing became more rhythmic and even. This, in turn, paved the way for rational thought.

He still wanted answers. But he knew he would have to wait. Even now, the data was being studied. His own vitals were being cross-referenced against Nodens's, equations were being hastily scribbled onto the pages of notebooks, and a thousand different variables explored. He forced himself to return to the couch, where he plopped down and began toying with one of the tasseled pillows. Technically, he should have already begun working on his post-Walk operative report, but this hadn't exactly been a standard assignment. In this situation, a loosening of protocol adherence seemed in order.

“Chuck, you need to hear this.” The female voice came from a speaker embedded in the ceiling. The familiar lilt sounded strained, and Chuck envisioned stress creasing a face he'd only ever imagined. “These were recorded just a few minutes ago and…well, I think the recordings will speak for themselves.”

The woman's voice was replaced with a faint hiss, almost like the sound of a waterfall in the distance; but wavering in and out of that hiss were voices. Dozens of them, moaning simultaneously through the single mouth of his Sleeper, alternately pleading for help and shrieking wordlessly. Pain, fear, desolation, and abject misery: The voices conjured the basest of human emotions, the dregs left when hope and light had all but faded, leaving only a world of distress and darkness.

The recording told Chuck all he needed to know. He'd read about the phenomena in case studies, but had never actually experienced it in the field. What the clinical terms of the studies hadn't conveyed was how hearing such a recording coaxed chill bumps as the little hairs on the arms and back of the neck bristled; they didn't explain how the stomach could suddenly feel hollow and empty or how listening to endured anguish could make it feel like nothing would ever be right in the world again.

“Oh God…oh, my lord…” Chuck closed his eyes and hugged himself, silently praying that the recording would end, that he wouldn't have to experience another second of the distress these tortured souls were being subjected to. “Those poor, poor people…”

The handbook called the phenomena a
Vertices Collision Scenario
, but to a Whisk, it was bad news. When an extremely willful soul got their hooks into a Crossfade, they refused to let go at all costs, exerting their determination as they consciously mold personal realities. These weren't lost spirits who simply created a way station like Abigail had; they somehow recognized a Crossfade for what it truly was and understood on an instinctive level how to manipulate it. The more convincing the Crossfade became, the wider it expanded, eventually sucking in nearby Crossfades like a black hole pulling in neighboring stars. Textures, tastes, and smells took hold and the illusion of time reasserted itself; if left unchecked, the Crossfade became an entire world with thriving ecosystems and complex weather patterns. Once that occurred, the Crossfade became what the handbook referred to as a
Cutscene
.

Part of Chuck's job was to keep this from happening. He, and other Whisks like him, tried to clean up these transient dimensions before they became too real and the megalomaniac at its core became convinced of his own divinity. This was important because if allowed to grow indefinitely, a Cutscene would draw other souls to it. Maybe they were fooled into thinking it was the Promised Land; or maybe it was simply governed by the laws of attraction.
Why
it happened didn't really matter. The point was, once others believed in the reality of this customized Crossfade, they became stuck in its web. It cocooned them within its strands to the point that the souls and the location no longer existed as separate entities, but as parts of a whole. And that convergence is what constituted a Vertices Collision Scenario.

“You know what this is, Chuck?” the woman's voice pulled him out of his thoughts, snapping him back to the here and now.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“It's nearly 4:30. Jarvis left an hour ago. Rollins is on vacation and Bailey called in sick again.”

“Alone at last.” Chuck's feeble attempt at humor fell flat, and the woman he'd ever only known as Control allowed it to hang in the air without comment. In perfect silence, he looked up at the camera as he ran his fingers through his hair, weighing the consequences of the situation.

According to the handbook, there shouldn't have been a decision at all. Standard operating procedure dictated that the data be handed off to a Level I Whisk, someone who had more field experience. Someone who'd actually passed the advancement exams instead of continuously screwing up the translocation equation.

“So what's it going to be, Chuck?” Control's husky voice had always reminded him of a film noire heroine; he imagined her in the booth, veiled by shadow as crimson lips parted just above the microphone. But there was something else in her tone this time. In fact, it almost sounded as if the woman was barely holding back tears. But, given the effect the recording had on him, that was to be expected.

Chuck sighed and leaned back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. Worst case scenario: He'd get his ass chewed out and a mark in his file. But best case could end with a promotion if he played his cards right. Having no close ties to friends or family, Chuck's job was everything to him. He parlayed his loneliness, his longing for intimacy, and lack of hobbies into ambition. Maybe he'd failed in other areas of his life. Maybe he'd alienated everyone who'd ever given a damn about him and isolated himself behind walls of solitude. But a career? That should've been easy. There were rules and guidelines, clearly defined steps leading to a sense of accomplishment and pride.

Despite his ambition, it seemed like that damn equation would never give up its secrets. He'd spent countless hours scribbling numbers in a library of notebooks, plugging in variables as he struggled to make the math balance; he woke up in the middle of the night, feeling as if the solution was just slightly out of reach and trying to prove that this time it had really come to him in a dream. For months, he'd slaved over the problem without making any discernible headway, and repeated failure had worn him down to the point that Chuck had begun questioning his own skills. For a man whose job was the single thing he had going for him, this was the worst case scenario.

“I've got this, Control.” Chuck listened to his own words, secretly wondering if they sounded as confident as he hoped. “I'm going in.”

Reattaching the leads to his
instrumentation,
Chuck inspected the halo to ensure it hadn't been damaged when he'd scrambled off the couch. The piece of equipment looked like a hardhat's webbing embedded with circuitry and sensors; the halo was insanely expensive, and if it had been damaged, Chuck's pay would be docked for years to come.

Wiggling each sensor nub with his fingertip to ensure it wasn't loose, he couldn't help but wonder why Control had even given him the option to proceed with this mission. She knew the handbook as well as he and a large part of her duties lay in safeguarding his well-being. Perhaps that was it, he thought. Maybe a bond had formed over the years, and she realized his eagerness, his drive to rise to the top of his profession. Maybe she didn't want to disappoint him. Or perhaps she was just bored and looking for something to kill the last few hours of their shift. It was anybody's guess. All he knew for certain was the halo appeared to be undamaged. Slipping it onto his head, he lay back upon the couch, fidgeted until he was comfortable, and took a slow breath through his nose.

“Chuck”—the lights in the room dimmed as Control's voice came through the speakers—“you can still back out, you know. It's not too late.”

The stop and go rhythm of her words, however, implied that her statement was a mere formality. She seemed to know as well as he that aborting The Walk was not an option. Continuously flubbing the translocation equation had really started to do a number on Chuck. His repeated failure chiseled away at his confidence, eroding the very supports that propped everything else up. At some point, frustration would mutate into unfocused anger, and that type of distraction would lead to careless mistakes. Which would only make matters worse.

Once he was caught in a downward spiral, burnout wouldn't be that far away; and Chuck knew he was already well upon his way. He could see the warning signs listed in the handbook manifesting in his own life: stacks of dirty dishes piling up in the sink, mornings when he skipped a shower and wore the same clothes to work as he had the day before, and his interest in any sort of recreation waning. It was only a matter of time. And he couldn't let that happen under any circumstance; if he got to the point where he could no longer function effectively, The Institute would let him go. He'd seen it happen before. With nothing else to take the place of his career, what would his life become?

“Cut the chatter, Control.” His thoughts pinged Chuck's tone with a harder edge than he intended, so he attempted to mask his irritation with a whispered joke.
“I see dead people.”

If Control understood the reference, she didn't show it. She proceeded with protocol as he took another deep breath and purged the tension from his body, channeling it down through his legs and releasing it via his feet chakra. The lights continued to dim until his office was a landscape of silhouettes and shadows. From the overhead speakers, a bell chimed three times in slow succession, each wavering ring allowed to fade before the next was struck. The scent of sandalwood wafted on the borders of perception as jets hidden within the walls puffed scented vapor into the room.

With the halo nestled against his head, Chuck closed his eyes and emptied his mind of conscious thought. As he slowly inhaled through his left nostril, he pictured a current of white light looping through his sinuses and filtering through his brain before being pulled down into his diaphragm. He held the inhalation for five heartbeats and released a long sigh, exhaling further tension, worry, and all the mundane concerns of a flesh-bound spirit. After five more beats of his heart, Chuck repeated the process through his right nostril, slipping deeper and deeper into relaxation.

He visualized his hands as clearly as if his eyes were open: the wrinkles on his knuckles,
semitransparent
hairs sprouting from the tops of his fingers, and the glossy shine of his nails. At first, it was as if his hands were illuminated by a spotlight upon a darkened stage; but within seconds, details of the room flooded his imagination and he felt—as well as saw—the phantom appendage flex without actually being moved physically.

Two minutes passed before he drifted toward the ceiling, his astral form slipping from his body like a balloon from the grasping hand of a child. He looked down upon a body that appeared to be wrapped in the arms of sleep; his chest rose and fell with evenly spaced breaths and his eyelids flickered slightly. Chuck knew he wasn't sleeping, though; he existed in the boundary separating wakefulness from dreams, floating weightlessly with a silver ribbon streaming from his sternum.