Glitch. Part 22

"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 pa.s.sed 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 b.u.mping the metal part.i.tion 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. "f.u.c.k."

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 a.s.sessed 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 gra.s.s p.r.i.c.kled 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 specialists, 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 s.h.i.t 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 s.p.a.ces sat at the entrance. I recognized Laurent's blue Yaris on the farthest s.p.a.ce.

"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 bra.s.s handle led the way in. The place had no windows. The entire row smelled like frying oil Josh got out of the car. Shoving his hands into the pocket of his hoodie, he strode past me and Lena. Rather than opening the door, he raised a dirty runner and kicked it open at the handle.

The door swung aside. Hot air and the smell of frying cheese burst from the dark, open doorway. Josh stepped inside. Lena and I followed him.

The inside of Helen's was even more sketchy. In fact, the word c.r.a.p-shack came to mind. The place was small, with an acid smell and no paint job. The walls were yellowed plaster, lit by bare, flickering bulbs-the old kind where you could see the wires glowing inside the dusty gla.s.s.

I cast a long look at the place, wondering how a it managed to exist in the developed world. Music piped from hidden speakers; sounded like jazz. Who would play jazz in a place like this? Bare pipes in the ceiling, chipped wood, and the walls...

The walls were the strangest part of this place. They were covered with scribbles from black magic-marker. The markings spread everywhere, a babel of writings, drawings, and swear words. The graffiti ran across every corner of the plaster-sometimes neat and furtive-alex we need g. in here, call me when you see this-and sometimes crude and huge-XOXO HELEN'S THANKS FOR HAVING US.

A shelf of IKEA wood and punched metal was stabled to the wall near the door. A stack of potatoes occupied the shelves. The potatoes were also autographed in black magic marker. The one closest to the edge of the shelf screamed at me with a winged skull, drawn expertly on the withered brown skin.

The place was empty. Old wooden tables and mismatched chairs lined the walls. The chipped wooden furniture called to mind a junk yard. Duct tape bound the more decrepit items.