Thump.
“Shit!” Josh screamed.
Thump.
The back of my heat was matted and sticky and warm. I tried to breath. No more air. Just fire in in my veins. No room to scream.
THUMP.
The last thump ended everything. I wondered if I’d died. For a while, my ears sang deaf-tones to my head.
The air was hot now, but I could breathe it. My skin prickled and I flexed my fingers. I could control myself again.
Josh hissed, and he sounded very close again.
Lena’s voice said. “Josh.”
“I’m checking.”
Something tapped the ground.
“Shit,” Josh whispered.
A quick scrape hissed in the silence. A dot of light lanced up.
“Is it Level Zero?” Lena asked.
The flame dropped to a smooth, black floor. The light didn’t waver. I waited for the flame to creep along the matchstick, turning the wood to black, but it didn’t. It just burned.
Now that I looked at it, the flame looked almost crystalline—not like a real fire, but like an out-of-focus light in a photograph.
“Feel for doors.” Josh murmured.
Before either of us could move, a slow, crunching sound pierced the blackness. It sounded like rocks grinding.
I’d heard that sound before—at the construction pit.
“Shit,” another matchstick hiss punctuated Josh’s swearing. Three more tiny flames dropped in line at his feet. Maybe because of Level Zero’s strange brand of physics, or maybe because my eyes were so used to the dark, the matches illuminated a lot more than they should. I could see Josh and Lena, the details of their clothes, the expressions on their faces all drawn long and thin by the flames.
Josh held a plastic cylinder of matches in one hand. The top end was screwed off, and rolled around his feet.
Josh grimaced, and lit another match. He threw it. It landed a good six feet away from us.
The grinding grew stronger.
“Shit,” Josh hissed. He threw out more matches. The small, lonely lights drew constellations on the ground, and then an entire starscape.
As more and more matches hissed to life and flew to the ground, I realized something.
This room was much bigger than the chambers in Level Zero.
Josh gave up on the matches. He reached into his hoodie and pulled out a pocket knife. The handle was long and curved like the hilt of a sword.
Josh pulled open the blade and dropped to the ground. The blade stabbed the ground. Blue sparks flew up
“We’re blocked.” Josh whispered. “The thing fucking blocked us.”
Lena scanned the darkness. “There has to be an exit. They can’t get rid of them.”
“But they can stretch the rooms so far it won’t matter.” Josh said. “It couldn’t have known we were here. They’re not this smart. No one knows about the alpha gate.”
The noises were louder now. They came from everywhere. The grinding sounded like the wheels of a tank, coming closer and closer.
“Earring?” Lena asked.
“Earring.” Josh said.
Lena undid one of the many gold hoops on her left ear. The flames below us turned it into molten gold.
She tossed it at Josh. He caught it, took the knife, and scraped a line across the gold.
The gold turned white, burning-magnesium white. Josh shielded his eyes and grinned.
The noises stopped.
“Take that motherfucker!” Josh shouted.
“He can’t see us now,” Lena said.
“Damn straight. Didn’t think we’d have a cloaking program did you!” Josh bellowed. “Oh Christ in Heaven.”
The white turned bright and brighter until I couldn’t see anything. My vision whited out.
“Ah shit!”
The white vanished. Bright blue sparks burst from the earring. It tumbled to the ground and fizzled out.
“No,” Josh whispered. “They can’t do that.”
The sounds came back. It sounded like groaning now. Like whale-song fed through an electric guitar.
At the far reaches of the match-flames, a single mote of light glimmered.
“Shiiiiit.” Josh seethed.
It rose into the air like a soap bubble.
The other lights began to glimmer as well. At my feet, the fire slowly took on the shape of a pyramid. The edges of the light flattened out, and it became a translucent triangle of pure light—like the origami violets.
The lights bobbed against the ground, then rose. They floated past my head, and vanished into the big dark of the room.
The lights left, one by one. Their flight illuminated the faces of Josh and Lena: arms twisted, legs bent for flight, hands grabbing at tools that no longer worked.
Darkness now.
Level Zero had its own life cycle. It had its own fauna.
And, I now realized, it had predators.
Far away, two shining blue eyes flashed open.
CHAPTER EIGHT: PREDATOR
“What happened?” Josh asked.
I thought I was kneeling. I was too dizzy to care. My senses ran in circles; I smelled darkness, heard blood, and tasted the vast, roaring silence of Level Zero.
“Where’d it go?”
Starbursts swam along my eyes. I threw out my hands. I felt for the ground, and it was there, just upside down. I was lying down. Why was I lying down?
“Sam?” Josh called. “Lena?”
“Here,” I croaked. My voice sounded strange to me. What just happened?
Pins and needles brushed over my skin. Blood rushed to my head. Slowly my sparking brain calmed down.
We were in Level Zero. I’d bitten my tongue. The blood I tasted came from the bite.
“Guys?” Josh called again. By his voice, I could tell he was standing, moving.
“Here,” I said.
I heard faint footsteps. Something pointy nudged my ribs.
“Sam?” I heard Josh ask.
“Josh?” I answered.
“What happened to the Stalker Man?”
What Stalker Man?
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Fuck. Hang on.”
Sssssch. The scratch of a lighting match. A tiny star of lemon-coloured light flickered above me. It flickered along the lines of Josh’s grim face.
I found my balance and pushed myself up. My head swam, but the dizziness evaporated when I focused on the light.
Just like before, the light illuminated more than a simple flame should; instead of just showing Josh’s hands, the light cast a circle around us.
Josh grinned. “You know these are programs right? There’s like no oxygen in Level Zero.”
Josh held the light up to me. It looked like a crystal sunflower.
“Cool huh?” He asked. And for the first time I realized he did think it was cool. In near total darkness, Josh‘s voice and gestures turned fluid and smooth, like a real human. “They work outside of Level Zero too—a little bit. If we can improve on it then it means free, no-emission light. Gonna win a fucking Nobel.”
“What happened?” Lena shouted.
Lena came in from the darkness. We turned to look. Unlike Josh, the darkness muted Lena. Daylight-Lena moved strong and capable; she stepped over park benches and moved through crowds like they belonged to her. But now, she shuffled forward towards the light, stunned.
“The cloaking program must’ve kicked in late,” Josh said. “Makes sense. The Stalker Man probably interfered with it.”
Lena shivered. She joined us around the light.
Josh handed me the match.
“Let me check...” He backed away and patted at his pockets. He hit something, and pulled it out.
I held the match as close as I could to my face without eating it. It could have been my imagination, but when I breathed, the light seemed to swell.
Once, through some random Wikipedia-ing, I’d seen a painting by the Spanish painter El Greco. The p
ainting showed a boy, lighting a candle between the still, solemn faces of an old man and a monkey. It was an allegory for something, but all I cared about was the beauty of the light. The way it shaped and softened the three figures, together in that lonely darkness.
The old man was a fool; the monkey was a monkey. They could see the flame, but they could not control it. Only the boy, cheeks puffed, cradling the flame within his fingers, could create and destroy the fire that revealed them to each other.
I held my breath. The yellow light dimmed. I held it for longer, and its centre darkened to a sunset orange.
I breathed out. The light came back.
“I hope Amrith’s okay,” Lena mumbled.
“We’re the ones that nearly died.” Josh said absently. “Fucking lucky we had the cloaking program.”
“I just hope he’s okay,” she said. She turned away. The light added yellow blush to her pale cheek.
Josh coughed. “Now that the stalker man is gone we can open a gate. Sam—you need your knife for this one. Now that it’s passed through the Alpha Gate, it’ll be able to open smaller gates for a little while. You have about a month before it becomes useless.”
I felt around in my back pocket. My fingers found a plastic handle. I pulled out my pocket knife, and flipped open the blade. The matchstick’s light pooled into the ridges of the Konami Code.
“Just scrape it along the floor.” Josh said. “That’ll open a gate somewhere within the GTA. Just hope it’s not in the lake bottom or the subway tunnels.”
Lena coughed. She rubbed her shoulders.
I knelt, flicking the matchstick away. The matchstick dropped from my fingers and clicked on the smooth, black floor.
I held the blade down to the ground. When the metal touched the floor, I felt no resistance on the blade. It was like the invisible floor.
I dragged the blade. Blue light followed it. It made a perfect, shining line. Beautiful.
I breathed out. The dot of yellow light flared, and the light from the gate grew, outshining it, wiping it away.
#
“Trees,” Josh scowled as we left the gate.
“It’s nice here.” Lena said. “Oops—dropped my pen.”
I turned my head. The sky hung on my left, an unspeakable drop into the Credit River lay at my right. Below us, the concrete of the Burnhamthorpe bridge accepted our feet as if it was the ground. I heard tires bumping the metal partition topside the bridge.
We were standing at a ninety degree angle.
“Right in that tree.” Lena said. In the cold daylight, she was back to her old self. Spread shoulders, high head, air of ownership. “Fuck.”
She brushed a finger through her hair. As she did, her hair went from pointing towards the bridge and fell to the left—the down for the rest of the world. It looked like a strong breeze had forced her hair down.
The three of us stood, sideways, on the north side of a concrete bridge on Burnhamthorpe road.
I recognized the location: UTM was near here. The river flowed in a tree-lined valley beneath the bridges wide arch, drawing a shaky line south towards Lake Ontario. Gravel lines followed the river—pedestrian paths—lucky no one was out today. The pathways ducked and snaked through trees that waved in the high wind.
Josh stood farthest to proper ‘down,’ on a grey-stained patch of concrete. Josh had changed back to normal too. He hunched his shoulders and buried his chin in his chest.
“We always end up in weird places,” I said.
“We can end up anywhere when you open a gate from within Level Zero,” Lena said.
I nodded. There was a hard ball of fear in my throat, but I swallowed it down. “So how’s this work?”
“We’ve lost our referents,” Josh said. He stomped up the bridge to me and surveyed the sun-gleamed railing on the right. He shook his head at it. “It’s one of the two basic bugs we can use.”
Josh rolled his shoulders and headed towards the end of the bridge, where the concrete met the end of the valley.
Lena and I followed Josh to the end of the bridge. I thought that I’d be dizzy, but I felt fine. For all appearances, I was still standing straight up. The world had just turned sideways.
We walked to where the bridge narrowed to a slice of concrete against a wall of green turf.
I assessed the lumpy turf. I held out my palm.
“I wouldn’t do that.” Josh said.
Gravity.
It kicked my in the stomach. My insides lurched. The sky spun. The turf charged.
My nose hurt.
Everything smelled like dirt.
I spat out a dead leaf and rolled onto my back. Cool grass prickled my neck.
Lena, still on the bridge, knelt, braced her hands against the bridge, and pushed down to the ground. She rolled onto the dirt and ended in a crouch on the ground. She got up in a single, fluid motion, like it was no big deal. I tried to push myself up. My head went dizzy again.
Josh got to the ground without Lena’s grace but with all the efficiency. He shuddered as he touched down, and jammed his eyes shut.
“Where are we?” Josh asked the sky.
“Mississauga,” I said. “Near UofT’s Mississauga campus.”
“In the sticks? Figures UofT would be here.”
“Where’d you go?” I asked.
“Undergrad in physics from Waterloo,” Josh said. “Masters in physics from Ryerson.”
“Ryerson has a physics department?” I asked.
“Shut up.”
“I went to Ryerson too,” Lena said.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” I rolled onto my stomach. A twig poked my belly. “My car is still at that park isn’t it?”
“Yep.” Josh said. “And we need to get it back. Haze is at Helen’s tonight—that’s in North York.”
“What?”
“First things first.” Josh gently kicked me in the ribs. “Can we get a cab in your hick town?”
I grunted. Mississauga wasn’t my town. “I just work here.”
Josh called a cab company he had on speed-dial. We hung out near the trees waiting for them. With Josh in his hoodie and with Lena and her multiple ear piercings, I felt like a loitering teenager.
It didn’t help that Lena was doing acrobatics on the trees.
“Guys! Watch this!” She told us for the fifth time. We watched her. Lena charged at a tree, jumped, and ran up the trunk like Jet Li. She pushed off from the trunk, soared towards a branch, and caught herself on it. Her arms jerked from the impact, and stabilized. Her legs dangled five feet off the ground.
“This is the hard part!” She yelled.
She let go.
Lena slammed into the earth, landing clean on her feet. Her knees bent, taking the force and stowing it beneath her feet. Lena breathed for a few seconds, and got up like nothing had happened.
“Think I can do a handstand on that other branch?” Lena asked, breathing heavy. “I think I can. I’m going to try.”
Lena ran towards another tree. Josh kicked my foot.
“You take care of that knife.” Josh said. He patted his pockets and pulled out a wrinkled pack of cigarettes. “Christ I wish I’d saved a match.”
“I thought they were just programs,” I said.
“They’re matches and they’re programs.” Josh said sullenly. He flung the pack into the sidewalk. The lid popped open and a single cigarette rolled inside it.
Josh gazed raptly at the cigarette pack as if he was pondering getting up and chewing the nicotine out the tobacco.
Behind us, Lena shouted from some high-up handhold, “guys! I’m doing it! Guys! Take a picture! This is awesome!”
“Why?” I asked Josh, tilting my head to the acrobat.
Josh shrugged. “Me and Laurent needed people to go into Level Zero so we could do tests on the outside. Lena and Amrith answered the ad.”
“You put an ad on Craigslist?” I said.
“Kijiji.” Josh corrected me. “We wanted parcour special
ists, since they can get out of tricky places.”
Like rooftops. I shuddered.
“Guys!” Lena called.
“This cab is going to cost about a hundred,” Josh sighed. He pulled out his wallet. “I have twenty.”
I sighed
#
Traffic was bad on the Danforth. The cab ride over to Bay Park ended up costing 150.
“We’ll get the guys to buy you something nice at Helen’s.” Lena said as I handed a day of work over to the driver.
I slammed the door shut. The dark blue cab—quickly turning black as the sun set—revved its engine and did a doughnut out of Bay Park’s gravel parking lot. A stream of white, clay dust sprayed around its tires.
The Pontiac sat in the middle of the lot where I’d left it, looking lonely and dejected. This was the second time I’d abandoned it for Level Zero. I patted the hood and beeped the car open.
“I should’ve worn a better jacket,” Lena murmured as she got into the back seat. She turned her head looking for the seat belt and her earrings chimed together.
“So what’s the deal with the jewelry?” I started the ignition. The car huffed to life. The muted neon display blossomed at my fingers, and the heating kicked out a steady squall of warmth.
“They have programs in them,” Lena said absently. She clicked her seatbelt into place. “Josh. Safety first.”
Josh wrinkled his nose. I took the car out of the lot. He told me to head north. I took a few roads I knew.
Josh and Lena didn’t speak for a long time. They looked at each other a lot, and started to talk before stopping. I ignored it. I was thinking about stuff. Stalker man stuff.
I turned on the radio.
“Know this song?” I asked as the radio tuned into Chemical Romance’s Teenagers. “Teenagers scare, the living shit out of me.”
I sang until we reached the place. Josh and Lena didn’t join me. They probably listened to house music or something.
It was full dark by the time we arrived at Helen’s—a dingy looking pub in a row of dingy-looking restaurants. A row of parking spaces sat at the entrance. I recognized Laurent’s blue Yaris on the farthest space.
“This is sort of our headquarters,” Lena said as we got out. “The pizza is good. They’ll put nachos on it.”
I beeped my car shut and cast a long, speculating look at Helen’s front door.
Helen’s sat between an Asian Health Spa place with a picture of a smiling woman in the window, and a barber shop that was closed. The front was red brick. A painted green door with a faded brass handle led the way in. The place had no windows. The entire row smelled like frying oil