Glitch. Part 28

If every room looked the same, I started to think, then every room really was the same. Same dimensions, same ecosystem, same absence of gates. So I'd spent an hour or more inside the same room.

My stomach panged. When had I last eaten?

What was Level Zero? Junk data-that's what Lena said. But what junk data looked like this?

No-the world wasn't a computer program, at least not in the way the Level Zero crowd and their hobo leader thought.

Come to think of it, I'd never heard Haze's thoughts on Level Zero, just Josh's.

I didn't think junk data looked like this. The endless stretch of rooms more resembled some extraterrestrial prison, or maybe purgatory, or cells in an organism.

So what did that make me?

Prisoner.

Sinner.

Sickness.

Then what were the Stalker Men?

I kept on walking. I felt even more disconnected from my body now. Maybe I wasn't even walking anymore.

I took a deep breath. I'd forgotten I had lungs for a second. And where were my feet? I couldn't see them in the dark, and the glowing lights shone just enough to make themselves known.

I felt like a presence within Level Zero-not a human one, just an ent.i.ty of thought. Almost as if the borders of my self were dissolving.

Maybe it wasn't my body walking. Maybe the world just had a bunch of states-movement, force and thought. Maybe they were all just variables controlled by physical objects. But maybe if you could just manipulated the variable, you didn't need to actually move.

That didn't make sense. But I was thinking lots of weird things right now, so f.u.c.k it. I just needed a gate.

If Level Zero was just the same room, then all gates were the same gate.

My stomach wailed. I grabbed my gut and felt things gurgling down there. I was so hungry.

The emptiness in my gut had grown and grown as I walked. That was one thing I noticed even as my body faded from me.

I had to eat. I didn't want to die down here.

But death was just another state of being.

People died all the time.

My hunger grew. The time wore on and I still didn't see any gates. The pain in my chest was reaching beyond my stomach and into my heart, my lungs, my blood. It crawled up my throat and seeped into my head.

And inside my head, it played with my brain. It shifted the grey matter and gurgled it around. I felt like it was rearranging my head, fixing it.

People died all the time. The world f.u.c.ked you over. It wasn't as if it mattered. And if I died then who really cared?

I'd thought like that for a long time.

After Jon died, I'd forced myself to think like that. Sometimes I'd cried a lot, even after I promised myself I wouldn't.

But then I got used to the idea.

Once I'd gone to the ROM's paleolithic section. Had a big white room, no paintings, just bare, white plaques with black Helvetica script giving dates and descriptions. The artifacts rested on blank white cabinets, and they all looked alike. Old wood, old bones, old stone, old clay. It all looked alike-dirty and ruined and the colour of dust. The things we were, the things we made, the things we came from, all went back to the same s.h.i.t.

But no matter how much I accepted the idea, no matter how much I'd forced it into my head, it never truly made sense to me.

Now it made sense. The hunger made it right.

There was a gate.

Except this gate wasn't normal. It was red. It went up to the ceiling and it was red. It glowed carmine along the room-when had I come to this room?-casting a long, black shadow behind me. My breath fogged in its light.

A gate was a gate.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: DELUSION.

"You're in s.h.i.t now," Jonathan said to me.

The tires stuttered on the snow. Snowflakes crumbled on the windshield as we drove down the long, dark stretch of road.

The snow melted on the windshield. The wipers pushed the slush away with a croaky squeak. Ahead of us, the high beams shone on snow which fell like static against the blackness.

This was wrong.

I was past this. I was an adult now.

I looked down at myself; I was wearing the sweats and t-shirt I slept in.

Despite the wrongness, I didn't give way to panic. An eerie calm had settled over me. This was just a dream.

I turned in my seat and looked out my window. In the gla.s.s, I saw my reflection. It showed me: the adult Sam-stubble, baggy eyes, the whole deal.

The window showed nothing special. Just snow, trees and dark. No connecting roads. No traffic lights. By now, we should have come to an intersection. Instead, we just pa.s.sed mile after mile of narrow, tree-lined road.

"Nothing out there." Jon said.

"You're right." I answered.

Jon was bigger than me. Alive, he'd been my height, but now he dwarfed me in some way other than size: there was a fifth-dimensional largeness to him. If we played basketball he'd win, if he arm-wrestled me he'd win, if he talked to girls he'd be better at it. He'd always be bigger than me.

I turned to Jon.

And stopped.

Jon's eye was missing.

Faint light glowed from the dashboard readings. It painted the car with a soft, dark brush. In the dimness, I couldn't find blood on Jon's face. The abscess in his eye just gave way to darkness, like he was empty inside.

"I'm gonna teach you how to survive." Jon continued. "Do you know what you have to do?"

What do I have to do Jon?

Jon turned to face me.

Half his face was b.l.o.o.d.y pulp, like it had been sc.r.a.ped off. White cheekbone peeked out the mess, and a neat row of white bottom teeth. The middle tooth had a silver filling on it.

My throat caught. I tried to speak. My tongue didn't work. I tried to move. For a second, I felt my hand respond. But just as I began to lift it to the door, it went slack against my lap.

"You've gotta go down." Jon said. I saw his tongue flatten inside his ruined mouth against the teeth. "You've gotta find the dust."

Dust?

Jon stared at me with his good eye. The dashboard lit a gleaming crescent on it. The pupil was black-like the emptiness in his head.

But the darkness was just a fog. It was an illusion. There was light inside there-I could tell. Red light.

"He searches the halls of permanence." Jon said. He hissed, and ragged flesh skittered on his wound. "He hides and sneaks and tricks. He seeks to undo reality, all for this world of dust."

The invisible hold on my throat relaxed. I could speak.

"Who is he?" I asked.

"He is dust." Jon said. "He is nothing."

Cold seeped into my chest, cold so strong it hurt.

"What are you?"

Jonathan's body stared at me.

The darkness slowly parted around his eyes. Light grew behind them so gradually I could hardly notice. They were red now, red like a supernova sun-a bada.s.s, reality-warping thermonuclear reaction, going to s.h.i.t.

Slowly, Jon said.

"We are angels."

"You're in s.h.i.t now." Josh said.

I was driving the car down Mississauga Road.

The snow was bad-it came in sheets that whited out the windshield. The frozen wipers sc.r.a.ped against the gla.s.s.

Some music would be nice.

I looked at the radio dial. The car shuddered. I reached over and tuned it to 96.3.

The sound of gla.s.s breaking blasted through the speakers. Cracks, smashes and crinkles, like a crashing car. I turned off the radio.

"I'm gonna teach you how to survive." Josh continued. "Do you know what you have to do?"

I felt a b.u.mp. The car swerved. I jumped, and pulled at the wheel.

I felt the wheels skid beneath me. The steering control came, went, came went. I struggled to rein it in. We were going too fast.

"You've gotta be fast. You've gotta be quick." Josh said.

Blue fire burned out of Josh's stomach. The flame was spreading, slowly, across Josh's chest. It climbed thread by thread of his hoodie.

"You've gotta ask yourself: who are the Stalker Men?" Josh said.

I didn't care who the Stalker Men were. I just wanted them gone. I wanted this all gone. I didn't want to care, and I didn't want to remember. I wanted a normal life back.

"Think of everything in Level Zero-think of what it is." Josh said.

I didn't want Level Zero.

My fingers strained on the wheel. I gripped it hard.

I wanted Josh gone. I wanted Amrith and Lena and Laurent gone. I wanted them to never bother me again.

"Why do the Stalker Men exist?" Josh asked me.

"They're junk data," I seethed. I'd say anything for him to stop asking questions. "They don't have a purpose, they're just like Level Zero: an accident."

"You still think that?" Josh asked me. "Lena and Amrith think like that, but did you ever think I did? You don't see any connection between us and Level Zero? Between us and the Stalker Men?"

I thought of the Stalker Man's blue eyes, its soft white skin, its hideous, bony form. I thought of the smell and the body and the wrongness of its voice. The Stalker Men were light-years away from us.