 
GLITCH

AMIR AHMED

Copyright © 2012 by Amir Ahmed

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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The cover for this book uses a skull drawing originally by Tim Piper of The Noun Project, and licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY 3.0

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author's imagination and used fictitiously.

Prologue

On April 20, 2011, Professor David Thornton of the University of Toronto disappeared.

At first, it looked like he had taken an unannounced sick day. But by the end of May, Thornton was still missing. He didn't come in to his classes. He didn't contact his colleagues. His customary parking spot in the park near Innis College remained empty. He had vanished.

When no one else reacted, the university stepped in. They called his home, his cell, his bank. They looked for family but couldn't find any. The university eventually called the police, who had no idea what to do. Professor Thornton was declared missing one day later, and removed from payroll in July, the start of the summer semester.

Dr. Thornton had no wife, no children, and very few friends. But he did have me—his old student. Professor Thornton taught me everything I know about writing, research, and stories. He'd also helped me with a few personal problems that came to a head three years ago in my second year of graduate school.

I figured the least I could do, considering all that Professor Thornton had done for me, was to find out what had happened to him.

So, as he had taught me to do, I searched. I dove into dumpsters for trashed faculty minutes, cold-called phones that had their service cut decades ago, and boiled my eyes on the Internet reading every scrap of information related to Thornton and his work.

My search eventually threw up some names. Not a lot. When I tried contacting these leads I usually hit a dead end. It even turned out one of the people on my list had also gone missing. This person's name was Lena Romanuik.

The police had not connected the two missing people. Perhaps they didn't try that hard: it was a busy season for violent crimes, and the relationship between them was so tenuous that my findings could have been a mistake. I'd already racked up a few of those.

A month after beginning my search, I got lucky.

I work for a consulting firm on Wellington Street, a quick subway ride away from U of T. On a Friday before lunch, I was sitting at my desk playing flash games when I received an email from Professor Guy Allen, the head of the communications department at U of T's Mississauga campus. Dr. Allen had known Thornton and had collected some of the papers at his Mississauga office (U of T has three campuses, Toronto, Scarborough, and Mississauga; professors typically shuttle between campuses to teach). Allen told me that he didn't know what to do with them—would I like to see them?

I said I would. Very much.

I left work early and drove over to UTM. I met Professor Allen in UTM's communications building, a big modern glass and steel structure in the centre of the campus. He led me up a grand flight of sterile black stairs and down a long, narrow white hallway. We spoke the whole time about Thornton, and my attempts to find him.

When we reached Thornton's office, Dr. Allen showed me a pile of papers he'd cleaned and stacked neatly on a blacktop desk. He said I could come and look through them as long as I wanted, as often as I wanted, until he figured out what to do with them.

I sat down and began to read. It was four o'clock. I finished the stack at midnight. I had not taken any breaks. Dr. Allen had left at seven.

Thornton's stack was interesting. Disturbing. Some of the notebooks dated back to the eighties, and one was marked April 2011, when he'd gone missing.

Thornton wrote the last entry in red pen at the back of a spiral notebook with a green cover. The entry was written in clear capital letters instead of his normal slanted script. It was as if he wanted someone to read and understand this message, if nothing else.

I am going to the house. If Sam Flautt is there, I will have to kill him. Level Zero, the Stalker Men. Blue Eyed Jack. We are in danger. Gary, I let you down if I fail today.

I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. Please God don't let me die. Okay, I'm going.

This was a shocking find. For all I knew, this was the last printed message Thornton had left before he disappeared. It was incredible. And completely strange. It read half as a message to the reader, and half as a stream of Thornton's own thoughts.

The papers gave me a clear idea of what was happening, or what Thornton thought was happening. And they gave me a new lead: Sam Flautt.

I did some research on Sam Flautt. He had also gone missing—at around the same time as Thornton. I questioned his parents, his coworkers, tracked down his old roommate (still living in their old apartment), and was given permission to look at Sam's stuff. Sam was a journalist at heart, even though he worked at the HR department of a group called TEB Financial. He kept a blog and even wrote a diary, accompanied by an SD card filled with voice-recorded notes.

With the permission of Sam's roommate, I carefully took each bit of information, transcribed it, and correlated it with Thornton's notes when I could.

It revealed a story. A very frightening one, with disturbing consequences.

In memory of David Thornton, I have chosen to narrate the following story using the skills he taught me. I have attempted my best to assume the voice of Samuel Flautt, because his notes and entries are the most prominent, and because I have gathered a lot about his personality from his parents and roommate, Greg Koo. But mostly, I've assumed Flautt's voice because he is the main character, the catalyst of all of these strange events.

There will inevitably be errors and guesswork. There will be times when I fail to capture the proper tone, and insult these men and their memories. But I will continue because we understand the world through stories, because we act on stories.

The following story goes beyond the normal. It goes beyond what I personally want to believe. I hold no opinion upon its truth. Instead I narrate the events as Sam saw them, or believed he saw them.

I have found similar, corroborating stories of the Stalker Men, also called Blue-Eyed Jack, on the Internet, but have no desire to research them any further. Thornton believed in them. Sam believed in them. That's enough for me.

If this story is true, some very scary things might start very, very soon.

—Amir Ahmed

CHAPTER ONE: THE SANTA

"Over there!" Greg shouted.

I followed Greg's pointing finger to the Santa.

The Shirtless Santa reared at the base of the subway stairs, crouching like an animal next to an ad for Global TV. He stood six feet tall, bulging with muscle. A shock of curly black hair spilled onto his shoulders from beneath a dirty red cap.

The Santa scowled beneath his fake beard. His six-pack abs rippled beneath his skin.

I thought he'd charge. Instead, he raised his middle finger and ran up the flight.

"Bastard," I whispered.

My name is Sam Flautt. Mondays to Fridays I work as an HR rep at TEB Financial. Today is Sunday.

Greg and I ran to the stairs leading out of the Ossington subway station. Our feet pounded the tiles and clapped over the traffic announcements buzzing out the intercom. I jumped up the first step. A flash of red hat vanished at the top.

On the weekends, I write for my blog "Stranger Danger", documenting the weird parts of Toronto. Greg does the photos. You should check out the blog; once, we got mentioned on 102.1 The Edge.

"He's too fast," Greg shouted. I gritted my teeth and leapt up the steps three at a time.

"Get the camera ready!" I yelled back. The air roared past my ears. Afternoon light blazed off the steel railings.

I cleared the final step.

Bloor and Ossington was where Toronto's downtown sank into residential streets and lots of small, pointless shops. The neighborhood lived like the family car: old, comfortable, and worn smooth by use. The graffiti leaned towards the artistic more than the criminally utilitarian, and hipsters with nothing better to do pasted stickers of 8-bit video game characters on the trash cans. The restaurant signs were in equal parts left-to-right English and right-to-left Arabic.

The calm pedestrians, the gentle breeze, and the warm sunlight disoriented me as I came out of the subway. It was one o'clock, the end of the lunch hour. Toronto's new spring sun burned high and hot today, blazing white in traffic signs and passing cars. Crickets and cicadas buzzed in the brown, ragged grass.

I scanned the street. This intersection was home to a TD Bank, a Lebanese restaurant called Mayt El Heshla, a 24/7 convenience store, and Grandmaster Kong's Karate Academy. There were a lot of people on the sidewalk, moving slowly and enjoying the first few days of spring.

I forced myself to ignore the peace and quiet. It looked like a normal Sunday afternoon, but the Santa was nearby. I could smell his crazy.

Greg came up panting behind me. He clutched his Nokia in both hands. His fingers left sweaty, rippled marks on the camera's black plastic.

"We'll split up," I said, surveying the calm street. I'd tracked the Shirtless Santa for two days. I wasn't going to let him get away.

"I'm done," Greg wheezed. "I can't do it, man."

I didn't waste time arguing. I turned right on Bloor, stalking between the crowds and small, gnarled trees budding green in the new spring.

I scanned the streets. At every storefront and in every mob of pedestrians, I observed the same monotone normalcy. Just people relaxing and having fun. The front steps of a sex shop had nothing, the Long and McQuaide music store had nothing, a place called the Comedy Bar had only a slim brunette woman sweeping dead leaves away. Fucking routine everywhere.

Wait.

At an intersection a few meters down I saw an old woman in a pink windbreaker. Her face was pulled into a horrified grimace and her hands were reaching to her widening mouth like she was about to scream.

I sprinted across the street, leaving Greg behind me. A yellow Mustang squealed to a halt as I crossed. Its horn blared at me. I pounded onto the sidewalk, cleared a squat green bench, and chased the old lady's affronted gaze down an empty side street.

The side street was a single lane, stretching through a row of low office buildings. To my right, a pit dug two stories deep marked the birthing ground for a new parking garage.

There were no pedestrians here. The wall of buildings even pushed back most of the noise from Bloor. The buildings were all squat business buildings, half small brick buildings and half fancy wooden ones with ornate fronts and curved gothic windows from when the city was still under British rule.

I stood in the middle of the empty street. I listened for screams, swears, or the Santa's supposed catchphrase, "I need a ho ho hooooo!" Nothing.

I'd heard about the Santa for months, but had only just seen confirmed eyewitnesses testify on Twitter. He'd become a legend in the city; no one knew if he was a buff homeless person or a juice-monkey with a surreal spin to his free time. He appeared on the subway to do pull-ups on the hand-bars and hit on girls. He sported a perpetually gigantic hard-on that he called his Festivus Pole.

But despite his obvious insanity, the Santa was remarkably savvy. He refused to talk to cameras and left at the first sign of police or media. So far reports of him had been confined to interviews with victims and the girls who'd given him their numbers.

I needed footage of this man.

A voice down the road screamed, "What the hell!?"

Gotcha.

I ran in the direction of the shout. It came from a brown brick office building next to the construction pit. The building had small, deep-set windows, and a massive hedge-lined entrance. Behind a pair of silver-etched plate glass doors, the Santa screamed at a security guard. The guard screamed back.

I pulled out my black Samsung phone, found the camera function, and hit ON.

The camera flickered on. The quality was crap, but my screen caught the Santa and the guard, locked in their screaming match.

The Santa paused.

In the screen of my phone, the Santa flickered, suddenly moving too fast for my Samsung to capture. He raised his arms, lifted his leg, and spun. He drew his foot up. His hips locked like a pistol cocking. A white Adidas hung in the air.

And kicked the doors.

The doors blasted open, driven by the elemental fury of a crazy but very buff man.

I was standing way too close.

The stainless steel handlebar whacked my hand across the knuckles and sent my Samsung flying. I grabbed at my airborne phone. I missed.

The phone sailed through the air and crashed onto the sidewalk. That phone cost three hundred dollars.

"Bastard," I muttered. I clutched my aching hand. I smelled the Santa as he sprinted past me. He smelled of sweat and mildewed beard.

"You ass!" I yelled. But the Santa was gone.

I inspected my hand. Pain. Lots of pain. Red and white blotches swam across my knuckles. A bunch of small bones shifted and I could see them like bubbles beneath my skin. I choked a bit. Steady, Sam. Men don't cry.

"What the hell was that?" The security guard stepped out and stared down the street.

"You know that guy?"

"No," I groaned. I tried to move my fingers. They did—barely—with a pain like broken glass. "Just some asshole."

"You okay?" the guard asked. But I had turned away from him. I tottered over to my fallen phone, picked it up with my good hand, and slipped it into my pocket.

"Just—peachy," I grunted.

I stumbled towards Bloor.

If he was back on the main road, the Santa could get anywhere. Even if I found him, I couldn't film him with my broken Samsung.

My injured hand hung at my side. I shuffled forward; my hand flopped—dead meat. I pulled out my phone with the other hand.

I inspected my phone. A long white fracture ran down the black plastic casing. The phone's touchscreen rioted blue, green, and red shards. Garbage. I gripped the phone and the plastic creaked. No way my warranty covered Shirtless Santas.

I shoved the phone back and took a jog, trying to force the pain out my hand. My entire right arm hurt now. Shirtless bastard.

My phone buzzed again. Maybe its insides still worked. Not that it mattered; the trashed screen wouldn't let me do anything.

I pushed the phone's power button, but it kept buzzing. I gave up and slipped it back into my pocket.

Busted hand. Busted phone. No footage. All in all, not the best Sunday.

CHAPTER TWO: THE INVISIBLE FLOOR

No place like Toronto.

I loved this city for its schizophrenia, and because I'd never gone outside Ontario. Under the CN Tower, Toronto mixed skyscrapers, mom and pop stores, and raver clubs into a crazy chutney. It was also the only real city in Ontario; nearby Mississauga, Oakville, and Brampton all had massive populations, but the mindsets of suburban towns.

Maybe that's why when people describe Toronto they always come up short. It's just Toronto—one of a kind. The only alternative in Canada is Vancouver or Montreal. And I hear Vancouver smells bad.

There's an old, unfunny joke about this city. It goes, "Toronto has two seasons: winter and construction." Now, in late March, winter had ended and construction had begun. The smell of tar rolled through the streets, and orange pylons clustered around every imperfection in the road. The wind blew a lot because of Lake Ontario, and if you went high enough you could see the lake, a blue horizon at the city limits.

The wind blew now on the side street on Bloor. Smelling of fresh tar, Lebanese food, and cigarette smoke, this breeze shook the naked trees and flapped the traffic signs. It kicked up eddies of dust and twirled the pounded fragments of dead leaves, sand, and bark chips.

I watched, clutching my aching hand.

The Santa had fled. He probably wouldn't let himself get caught again. I'd have to come up with a blog post for tonight: either admit my failure to the harsh judges of the Internet, or come up with an entirely new story.

As I thought, a fat brown paper bag flew over a roof, landed on the street, and scuttled across the pavement. The wind picked up, and the bag skidded over the sidewalk, scurrying past my feet.

A bit of good karma couldn't hurt. I bent over to pick it up.

The wind roared and the bag tumbled away. It flew towards the construction pit at the head of the street. Normally I'd have given up, but I really needed that karma. I chased the bag.

The construction pit probably marked the future home of a parking garage or multilevel office building. Right now it was just a pit dug into ruddy clay. Steel railings and cardboard panels blocked most of it from view. The railings swung off the sidewalk and created a temporary path along the road. The panels showed bright, full-colour photos of pretty buildings in someplace sunny and snowless.

The paper bag careened through the air. It smacked against a cardboard panel, whacking a larger-than-life couple across the jaw. The wind pinned the bag to the panel, crackling it at the edges. I jumped at the bag and swiped it down.

The Buddha would be pleased.

I tried to hold the bag in my injured hand. Pain.

"Fuck!" I grunted.

There went my good karma.

"Did you hear that?"

The voice murmured out the construction zone. My ears pricked. Men's voices, speaking low.

"No. Now come and spot me."

"We can't use this route," The first man said. "It's too public."

A break in the panels further down revealed part of the pit's insides. I edged closer to it and felt a fear ball in my stomach. I dealt with weird stuff all the time: artists painting with placenta, homeless people twittering their days out, muscled Santas accosting subway patrons. But those people all worked in public. This sounded like something secret.

"It'll save thirty seconds, though. Haze is planning on using the church route."

They didn't speak with the easy, expansive volume of construction workers, and they didn't sound like what television told me criminals sounded like. They sounded young—maybe graffiti artists?

"Haze always talks big. He won't do it."

I crept closer to the gap in the signs. I went slowly, but I didn't have to bother. There was more than enough background noise coming from Bloor.

"But if he does do it, we'll be ready," one voice said. "The path here goes fifteen meters."

"Fine." The voice said something else but the wind drowned it out.

I crouched and planted my good hand on the cool asphalt. I peeked inside the pit.

It was a normal construction pit, the kind dotted all over the city. Everyone needed to turn parks into buildings and strip malls into high-rises. So yellow Tonka toys rolled in to dig up the dried-blood earth and dump in concrete, iron, and colour-coded string. The pit here was no different: a scaffold hung in the far end and a pile of PVC pipes lay at the bottom. Red and grey striations ran across the crumbling walls.

Two men stood on the pit.

And I don't mean in, I mean on.

They were floating.

Two guys stood about twenty feet above the pit's bottom. I looked for a sheet of glass, wires, or stilts. I didn't see anything. They were floating.

One of the guys wore a scruffy beard and one of those sack-hats that hipsters like. He sported thick glasses that I suspect he didn't actually need, and held a spool of yellow measuring tape. The measuring tape dangled just to his feet, where it stopped with his shoes.

This had to be a trick.

"Check the seal," the other guy said.

Other Guy was dressed in jeans and a grey hoodie three sizes too large. A Blackberry case hung on the waistband of his jeans, and a dark blue satchel bag swung from his shoulder.

"Fuck you," Other Guy answered. He looked at the sky and wrinkled his forehead like it bothered him.

Just to reiterate, he was floating. A pile of rocks lay piled below him, spoil from the clay. The rocks jagged in a series of sharp, pointy directions. If either of these men fell, they would die.

But they didn't. They stood on a plane of their own choice.

Tape Measure Guy sighed. He wound up the tape measure and jogged near the wall of the pit to the left of me. His feet rang silent on the air. Somehow I'd expected them to clap like solid ground.

Tape Measure Guy ran a hand over He ran a hand over the wall.

A line of blue light welled up against the wall.

The light looked like an LED or a strip from a neon sign. My stomach, so much smarter than my brain if only I would listen to it, turned heavy and queasy. To my brain, the light looked like an accessory to a mystery. To my stomach, it looked like bad news.

Tape Measure Guy pinched the tape and fed it into the wall. I didn't see a hole but the tape unravelled through it.

Tape Measure Guy pulled out the tape and inspected it. "Clean anyway," he said. "For now."

"A place like here is always clean," said Satchel Bag. "No fucking point."

"It takes three seconds," Tape Measure said. "Also I'm still pissed you said that to Lena."

Satchel Bag sauntered over to Tape Measure. Tape Measure braced both hands against the wall, like he was stretching.

"Maybe it was a dick move," Satchel Bag said as he turned away, back to looking at the sky.

"Hey!"

The voice came from behind me. I spun and lost my balance. My back fell against the cardboard panel and rattled the railings above the pit. A dark figure stood in front of me, outlined by the sunlight streaming in from the construction project's makeshift corridor.

It was the security guard from before, the one who had done his duty protecting his building from the Shirtless Santa.

The guard was a stocky man with a straw-coloured beard running down his cheeks and neck and a dark green lanyard running down his neck. He didn't look happy. What did he want with me? Couldn't he tell I was spying on wizards?

The guard's eyes were grey and steely, deep-set in his head, wrinkles running from them like cracks from an impact crater. Was he with the people floating in the pit? Was he going to kill me?

"Are you sure you're okay?" The guard pointed to my throbbing hand. "That guy whacked you pretty hard."

"I'm—I'm fine," I said.

"I saw you kneeling there..." the guard continued, raising his hand at me. He had a disarmingly friendly Canadian accent—soft and friendly. "And your hand."

"I was just getting something off my shoe, haha." I grinned manically. I couldn't see into the pit anymore. Fuck fuck fuck.

The security guard was staring at me like I was weird.

"Haha?" I tried.

For a long time the guard didn't respond. He seemed to be wondering if I was worth dealing with. Finally, he put his hands behind his back.

"I called the police. If you want to give any evidence for that guy, you should stick around."

I told the guard I needed to leave. He waited, seemingly for me to actually get up and go. I stayed there.

The guard shrugged, turned, and left. He whistled as he headed back to the building. The tune went out of sync with a set of silver keys clinking in his back pocket.

When he was gone, I bent back down and stared into the pit.

The men were gone.

Once again, the pit looked like every construction project ever. Just a hole. A hole that would become a building. The guys were gone. My story was gone.

Fuck.

Fucking fuck.

I stared at the suddenly normal pit in this suddenly normal world. I gritted my teeth.

I had two options.

I could pretend this never happened. I could go home and acknowledge my defeat to the Internet. Next week I'd do something easier for my blog, like making toffee. That was option one. Option two involved me being crazy.

My stomach liked option one.

My stomach was a pussy.

I shot my head up to the cardboard panels. The steel railings blocking the pit made a pattern of metal diamonds. Easy to climb.

My awareness of my surroundings goes up when I do stupid stuff. At a glance, I could listen for the footsteps of witnesses, find the high-tech shine of security cameras, and take in the intangible, psychic lure of the other side. The last bit was important. It was what helped me remember the one important fact in my life: I'd never had fun acting normal.

The railing rose about three feet above my head. I tested my injured hand; I could close it with only a little pain.

I planted a foot on the railing and grabbed a bar overhead. I pushed myself up and grabbed another. The top of the railing came closer and closer. I came eye to eye with a cardboard ad displaying oversized well-dressed rich people. The rich people were hugging each other and laughing.

I hooked my elbow around the top of the railing.

"Sam!"

I turned my head. It was Greg, running towards me. His heavy black camera swung with his stride. His thin wireframe glasses bounced up and down his nose.

"Hey, Greg," I said.

"What—are you doing—up there?" Greg panted. His feet stuttered to a halt. He clutched his side and gasped out: "I got—the Santa!"

I pushed against my foothold and rose higher above the railing. I took out my good hand and wrapped it on the top rung. The metal felt cold in my palm. I pulled myself up so my chin came over the top, and I peered into the other side.

A construction pit looks small when you pass it on the street. That's because they're usually next to the skyscrapers or the gigantic yellow diggers or the red and white cranes. Even if a construction pit is deserted, it looks small because of context: one day it's going to be another boring office building neatly set with normal-sized rooms and normal-sized lives.

Climbing on top of the guard railing, the construction pit was not normal-sized. It yawned, larger than life, like a predatory mouth, like a monster breaking out of the earth to feed. I felt wind on my face and could imagine that the pit was breathing, sucking me in.

The pit was huge. I was small. It was dark. I needed light. If I wasn't careful I would break my skull on the bottom, and the pit would not be harmed.

I put my other hand on the top rung.

"Sam? Sam?" Greg shouted. "What the hell, man? Get down—I got the Santa."

"This isn't about the Santa," I said. I pulled my chest above the top of the railing. My arms shook with the effort. Pain burned in my bad hand.

"Get down!" Greg seethed. "What if someone comes?"

"So what?" I asked. Greg's preoccupation with societal backlash was endearing, but sometimes it made him hard to work with.

I planted a foot on the top of the railing and my balance wavered back and forth. The pit grew deeper and darker. It stretched to fill my vision. I clutched the cold metal. I couldn't feel my fingers.

Carefully, I brought my foot down to the other side. I hooked it into the diamond railing notches and began my descent

"You're gonna fall," Greg said. I grunted, and took another step down.

"Hey," I said as I drew level with Greg.

I swallowed. Climbing down, fighting the lure of gravity and a horrible, horrible death, was much harder than climbing up. "Think you can bust me out of here?" I grunted.

Greg didn't laugh.

I took one more step down the railing. I felt gravity pulling me down—couldn't let it.

If I fell I'd die. If I fell I'd die.

So I wouldn't fall.

I took another step down. I'd used up the last of the railing. There was just a sheer wall of clay beneath me now. I couldn't climb down that.

"What the hell, Sam!?" Greg asked me through the steel bars. He was pacing, hilariously unhinged.

I looked down: about thirty feet of nothing. Nothing down there but a bad, bad fall.

But two men had walked on it.

I lowered my foot. It swept through empty air.

"Sam? Sam!" Greg shouted.

The muscles in my arms groaned.

The invisible floor must be a bit lower.

Those men walked on air—just a bit further down.

Pain built in my injured hand like gas before an explosion. I could hold it. I just needed two more inches.

Crick.

Something snapped along my wrist. I screamed my eyes shut. Wind whined in my ear and now I was swinging in the air. I felt my feet skating on nothing. A bar smacked my kidney. My body lurched away from the railing, toward the pit. Towards the fall. My good hand began to slip on the cold metal beams.

"Fuck!" Greg screamed. I felt a hand grab my arm. "Sam, get up!"

I threw my injured hand up. Greg caught it by the wrist.

"I'm okay," I said. "I'm okay."

"You're too fat," Greg grunted. "I'm gonna lose you."

"Fuck you!" I screamed.

I scraped the clay wall with my feet and sent scraps of mud flying. I was going to die. I was finally going to die and I hadn't even made a hundred hits on Stranger Danger.

Somehow I got more purchase on the clay. I kicked up and hooked a foot on the bottom rung of the railing. I hugged the fence with my chest. My head went dizzy. I felt like I was falling back, like the entire world was falling back into that pit and its mystery.

Out the corner of my eye, I imagined I saw a line of blue light—thin and hard like the line on a razor.

"I won't let go," Greg said. "Just come up."

"What?" I asked.

"I won't let go, so stop whispering 'don't let go'." Greg gritted his teeth and pulled my arm harder.

"I'm not whispering that," I said.

"Fine. Just climb."

I did as I was told. I shambled up the rungs. This wasn't fun anymore. Solid ground was fun. I came over the railing a second time.

I tried to make a slow, careful descent onto the sidewalk, but I got tangled halfway down and fell a few feet. I skinned my elbows against the concrete.

"What the hell, man!?" Greg shouted above me.

"Wanted to test something," I murmured. I felt the ground beneath me. I gripped it in my good hand. I loved ground so much.

"Test what? You could've died."

"I saw something." I flopped my hand over to the pit. "Invisible floor. Invisible floor there."

Greg raised his eyebrow. He looked around, grabbed the paper bag I'd rescued, and tossed it through the steel railing bars.

The paper bag sailed down the pit. It landed in a puddle at the bottom.

Now why didn't I think of that?

Greg kicked me lightly in the ribs.

"Come on," he said. "I've got the footage. We have to write the post."

I rolled over. The asphalt beneath me felt so stable, so wonderfully stable. I wiped a gritty sleeve against my face. The sleeve came back wet and salty.

How strange.

"Fine," I said. I got up and pain lanced up my arm. I winced. "First though, where's a hospital?"

#

We found a hospital willing to take us in a few blocks away.

It was an old clinic named Lady of Fatima. It operated in a building with an aged Victorian veranda outside but a modern, yellow-tiled office inside. The waiting room was small, cramped, and on the brink of being overcrowded. A patient filled every green-padded seat. A slim Filipino woman in dark purple scrubs sat at the reception desk, working between several massive monitors.

"What do you think of this sentence?" Greg asked me as we waited in the green-padded waiting-room chairs. He adjusted a pair of thin blue reading glasses and read off the netbook balancing on his knees. "There are few mysteries left in the world: human adventurers have scaled the heights of Everest—"

"Let me read it," I said. I pulled the laptop over to me.

We have cracked the atom, we have cracked the human soul. With all of that under our belts, we should be able to find Santa. But, ladies and gentleman, in the Toronto subway systems...

"I don't like 'ladies and gentleman'; it's too long to read," I said. I pushed the computer back to Greg. "Do you think they'll give me painkillers?"

Greg elbowed me in the head.

"Tell me about the invisible floor," he said.

I didn't.

"Fine," Greg muttered. He clacked a few more words out on the computer. "I'm nearly done. Give me your phone."

"What?"

Greg held out his palm. I pulled my phone out.

Greg twirled the Samsung in his thick fingers. For a short, stubby man, he always treated machines with a delicate flair. "Your SD card might have gotten video footage before it broke. I wanna see if I can retrieve it."

I closed my eyes and leaned back into my seat's green foam padding. I groaned; my entire arm throbbed with low, feverish pain.

I didn't want to be here. The waiting room was too hot. And the horrible silence of the other patients jagged my nerves. I wanted to be back at the pit. I wanted my hand whole and healed, not aching hot and burning with shifting, squealing pain.

I wanted to know what had let those guys walk on air. If it wasn't an invisible floor, it was a magic trick. If it wasn't a trick, it was some sort of hologram. But for what?

"Haha, we have something." Greg turned the phone over to me. He clicked a button and a video played on the computer.

The vid showed the Shirtless Santa turning, walking, raising his foot at the camera. I winced when I saw the door fly open and strike my hand. The image shifted up as the phone sailed through the sky.

What the—

Greg thumbed the track pad. "That's weird," he said.

"Yeah," I said.

The camera showed a sky full of stars. At noon.

The video ended with a crunch. We saw a flash of sidewalk, and then black.

"Maybe..." Greg opened up the video file's info to look at the details.

Greg shook his head slowly. "I have no clue why it's doing that."

There were definitely no stars when I took the footage, but the other parts of the video—the Santa, the security guard, the swinging doors—played exactly as I had shot it.

The nurse at the front called my name.

"The doctor can see you now," she said.

The doctor, a big Indian guy with two thick gold rings on his right hand, poked my wrist a couple of times. He held my arm in an uncomfortable way, and then gingerly tried to twist it. I screamed.

After that he put his thumb down on my wrist and knuckle. His fingers felt warm and dry, like leather, on my sweaty skin. He prodded up and down my arm.

"It's a sprain," he announced. "Several sprains. Pretty bad."

The doctor said I should put ice on it and take an aspirin. If I couldn't move it in three days it was probably a fracture. Thanks, doc.

"Think of it as a battle wound," Greg suggested as we descended into the Ossington subway to head home. "And the five readers will love the photos."

I'd seen Greg's photos. They were good. After encountering me, the Santa had run down Bloor Street. Greg was recuperating on the sidewalk when the Santa came by. He took the shot as the Santa sprinted across the street. Maybe being a lazy ass wasn't so bad after all.

The photo was saturated with bright noon colours, looking down onto the street. Greg said he'd jumped on top of a bench to get the angle. The picture mostly showed street, with a focus on the red figure in the centre. The Shirtless Santa, frozen in a leap, pom-pom hat swinging, fake beard and chiseled abs gleaming with sweat.

The picture didn't show much sky, but when I looked closer at the top edge of the photo...

I noticed something.

The sky was black.

Just like in my video.

Strange.

#

That Monday, I walked into work in my standard getup of khakis and my uncle's dress shirt. The clothes clashed and hung way too loose on my frame. But they clearly conveyed my feelings regarding corporate culture and HR's clothing policy.

The dress shirt's white sleeve hung unbuttoned around my right hand—the good one. I couldn't button it with my wrecked left hand.

I work as an HR slave at the TEB Financial internship program. It's my job to hire applicants for the program and grill them hard when they come in. I took the job because it seemed stable and I didn't have to take my work home with me. The only downside was the dress code: no casual Fridays for HR reps. We always have to dress up for interviews.

It may have been my imagination, but as I walked through the hallway to the HR office, it felt like people were staring. At first I thought it was my arm—it had turned pale and veiny overnight—but I calmed myself by telling myself the injury wasn't noticeable. It wasn't like I'd ruined my arm and would drag it around my waist forever, a crippled wad of crumpled bone and mangled flesh that would scare children and eventually inspire a teen slasher film.

No, it wasn't like that at all. The arm was fine. I ignored the not-staring and entered the HR office.

"Sam. Your arm," Sarah said as I came in through the door.

Coincidence.

The HR department takes up two offices and a cubicle hub on the fourth floor of the TEB Financial building in downtown Mississauga. I work in the smaller office with three other HR people. The office has a water cooler in it, and a whiteboard with inspiring quotes on it.

Sarah Hu, a Western grad with a tendency for floral print dresses, had already clocked in. She was sitting at her desk, her organized, clean desk, waiting obediently for some email from management. The model of corporate affectation.

"What happened to you?" Sarah asked as I set my backpack down at my desk. Right across from Sarah's, my desk painted a different picture of office life. Lots of junk. Lots of pencil stains from scribbling and erasing ideas for Stranger Danger stuff. I also had a much less sophisticated filing system than Sarah—I don't file.

"Just an accident," I said. I bent down and turned on my computer.

"It looks purplish," she said, leaning over to look. She brushed a hair from her eyes and squinted. "And it's twitching."

On second inspection, I could admit that my hand did have a sort of purple hue to it. A perfectly healthy purple.

"Can you move it?" Sarah asked.

"I think." I held out my hand and moved the fingers. Sarah choked a bit.

"You need a doctor," she said.

"I saw one. He said I'll be fine." On my computer, my desktop picture flashed on—a picture of Mario jumping over a koopa troopa. I ignored Sarah's staring and pulled up my schedule for today. An interview in the morning and a policy development meeting in the afternoon.

"At least put on a sling or something," Sarah said.

I nodded and mumbled something. I put away the calendar on my computer and called up the Stranger Danger website.

The Shirtless Santa article stood at the top of the page. My name and Greg's ran in the byline. Sweetness.

I skimmed through the article. It looked good. I'd edited and formatted it last night. The style changes looked okay.

"I'll be right back," Sarah said. She got up and left with her purple lunch bag.

I scrolled down the blog post. Even the pull quote looked good. And at the bottom of the article Greg had included the video retrieved from my phone.

I clicked the video.

It went as normal. The Santa, the screaming, the door kick. Except...

On my screen, the Santa kicked the doors, and froze. The video stopped there.

Greg had cut out the bit with the stars.

I rolled over to Greg's photo of the Santa. I don't know if Greg had done it by accident or on purpose, but the photo was cropped to hide the black sky.

Interesting.

Sara came back in with a tube of saran wrap.

#

When I went to interview applicants that morning, I wore a saran wrap sling across my arm and chest.

Sarah had pinned my arm to my chest and wrapped the plastic around my shoulder and back.

"It won't hold," I'd said.

"It will," she'd replied, and made another loop past my chest and around my shoulder. After two loops she cut the plastic and stuffed the frayed end into the crook of my arm.

I told Sarah I couldn't move my hand.

She told me that was the point.

For the next hour, my arm turned a variety of colors. A low pain burned through my wrist, tunneling through my bicep, and terminating in an unpleasant tingle at my shoulder.

The pain followed me throughout the day. By eleven, I was waiting to interview a new intern in the TEB interview rooms, and seriously pondering investing in mechanical limbs.

The interview rooms at TEB financial are small and motivational. The one I had to interview in was about the size of a washroom. There was one desk and two flimsy office chairs at either side of it. I sat at the chair closest to the door. A stack of papers rested on the desk for me to leaf through. Most of the pages were blanks I brought in to look important.

Across from me, a large poster showed a group of young men and women in business wear jumping. The yellow and black TEB logo ran across the bottom of the poster, along with the legend: TEB can take you places.

To distract myself from the steady, digging ache in my arm, I leafed through today's applicant's résumé and cover letter.

The guy's name was Gary Geare. Swim captain, fourth-year commerce grad, lots of club experience. Under the "education" heading of his resume, he'd written in St. Joseph's Academy under his York University degree. I'd researched St. Joseph's, and found out it was the name of a fancy private elementary school.

This interview was not going to be fun.

Someone knocked at the door.

"Yep?" I asked.

"It's Rohit." Rohit was the most senior, non-supervisor member of the HR office. He stood five foot seven, a 40-year-old man who followed world cricket and How I Met Your Mother. He perpetually wore a red sweater vest that made him look like someone's father from the fifties.

"Hey, Rohit," I said. "What do you have?"

"One Gary Geare." Rohit opened the door wider and revealed a tall, chiseled Dolce and Gabbana model with no obvious indications of a soul.

The thing named Gary smiled. He wore a black suit and red tie and had his brown hair gelled and swept up. "Nice to meet you, sir," he said.

"Likewise," I smiled back and offered my good hand. Gary took it and gave a weak handshake. His eyes fell across the sling pinning my arm to my chest. He ignored it. Good man.

I sat Gary down. Policy said Rohit and I had to tell a joke to each other to make the potential intern feel at home. Neither Rohit or I were good at jokes, so he just nodded and headed out the door. The door clicked shut behind him in time with the ticking clock behind me.

I leafed through the stack of papers on the desk and pulled out the page with the interview questions on it. We weren't allowed to ask interviewees questions of our own devising.

"So, what can you tell us about yourself?" I asked Gary, reading verbatim from the script.

Gary folded his hands in front of him. He lowered his head like he was praying, or deep in thought. More likely he was trying to remember the answer his girlfriend had written for him the night before.

"Well," Gary began. "I guess my story starts back in high school."

Gary went on. I clicked my blue TEB pen, pulled out a blank page from my stack, and began to doodle.

Gary continued his story, tying his high school lacrosse team into a meaningful picture of perseverance in the face of hardship. I'd heard his story fifteen hundred times already from the identical jock-accountants TEB loved so much. After I died, Gary and his twins' stories would be the soundtrack to my personalized hell.

I drew a cow, a turkey, and another cow on my paper.

"But I really realized that, you know, having a dream is fine, but you need stability to back it up," Gary continued.

"Amen," I agreed, not listening. I wasn't supposed to say "amen". We were a secular workplace.

Gary went on talking, and I began to draw a starry sky.

I've never been good at drawing, but even if I was, I don't think I could have captured how the sky appeared in my phone's video, and in Greg's photograph. The sky in those recordings looked... eerie. The perspective was off in a way I couldn't even remember. The most accurate way to describe it would be like how sky appeared in a video game: flat, like a painting, without the depth or sense of space. The sky in the video was more like a wall, pressing down on the world.

I drew a ripped Santa Claus below the night sky. I sketched out a speech bubble and had him say, "ho ho ho I'm a douchebag."

Gary was staring at me. I realized he'd stopped talking about a minute ago.

"Uhhh..." I flipped back to the question sheet. "It says on your résumé that you were chair of the commerce society?"

When I finished the interview, Rohit came by again to give Gary another tour of the place.

Alone again, with only the ticking clock for company, I loosened my tie and scribbled "2nd interview" on top of Gary's résumé.

I picked up my page of doodles, stared at it for a while, and crumpled it up. I threw the ball at the recycling box. It rebounded off the wall and bounced in.

I put my forehead on the desk.

Seven hours until I would get to leave.

The door opened.

"Sam! How's it going?"

I looked up. A short man in dress pants, a shirt, and a blue hoodie flashing the TEB logo came in like he owned the room. He did. This was Henry, the exec in charge of the internship program, my boss.

Henry bit his lips and shook his head at the papers fanned across the desk. He sat down in the chair opposite me. I didn't do anything to straighten my posture.

Henry frowned. Wrinkles blossomed on his forehead under greying brown hair.

I didn't straighten up.

"What's this about your arm?" he asked.

"Oh," I said. "It's nothing."

He pointed to my sling. "Well, what's that then? It isn't business attire."

I shrugged. He had a point. I stuck my thumb into the saran wrap and tugged it off my shoulder.

The sling came loose. My arm flopped to my side.

Oh my God.

"Oh my God," Henry said.

I looked away.

"My doctor said it was just a sprain," I said. I closed my eyes.

"How does it feel?" Henry asked.

I tried moving my arm. It didn't.

"I—I think I lost feeling in it," I said.

#

TEB Financial hadn't had a nurse since 2003; Henry clocked me out to find a doctor. If my arm exploded, it wouldn't explode on company property.

But by the time I rode the elevator down and entered the parking garage, my arm had improved. It still looked monstrous, but the feeling had come back.

By the time I got in my car I could move it again.

And when I drove into the bright afternoon sunshine, it just looked bruised.

The saran wrap sling had probably cut off my circulation. Now, the wrist and arm hurt bad—when I moved my wrist, it felt like nine different tendons were tearing—but I could move it.

In fact, it looked a lot more like a simple sprain now. I'd banged up my ankle when I was a kid, and this wound looked comparable. An injury like this needed frozen peas and Advil. Not a doctor.

A normal person with normal thoughts would have gone home and watched daytime television.

My head was not filled with normal thoughts. It was filled with starry skies, projected at strange angles.

I gunned my car, raced away from the TEB building, navigated onto Mavis Road. I turned on to the highway, heading west—to Toronto.

#

The construction pit looked the same when I got there.

I didn't see any workers nearby, but the foot traffic on the side street had increased since yesterday. A lot more men and women in frumpy business suits passed by with briefcases with gold locks and shined leather shoes. Losers; I'd changed out of my leather shoes when I swung by my apartment.

Cars rolled by. People came and people went. No one stopped to notice me, a crazy man in runners with a bruised arm and an orange backpack.

The pit was as I'd left it: no construction workers, no added supplies, no progress toward whatever was supposed to fill this hole. The piles of pipes and the pools of water hadn't changed. The paper bag still sulked at the bottom, where Greg had thrown it.

The only thing that looked different was the darkness: this morning, clouds had fanned across the city, bringing back a cold fall bite to the air. The clouds made the shadows come out; they made the darkness drift out of its corners and stretch out its long, thin fingers.

I unslung my backpack and laid it gently on the ground. Electronics thunked inside of it.

I eyed the paper bag at the bottom of the pit.

I pulled out my blue TEB pen. I flipped it around my hand a couple of times, testing the weight.

I tossed it in.

The thin plastic tumbled, incomparably small against the hugeness of the pit. The pen dipped, pointed down...

I held my breath.

It hit the ground. I didn't hear the impact.

No invisible floor.

Fuck.

I jammed my hands into my pockets and let out a long, seething breath. I looked up to see if anyone was staring.

When I looked back at the pit, the pen was still at the bottom. It was so small I could hardly see it in the dirt and clay.

Time for Plan B.

I unzipped the front pocket of my bag and pulled out my camcorder.

My phone had caught a starry sky at noon. Greg's photo had found the same. If some mysterious force fooled with recording equipment here, maybe that was my story. Even if the invisible floor was gone, even if physics was still depressing and boring and fucking conformist, a starry sky at noon was pretty cool. Stranger Danger would be up to ten hits in no time.

I powered on the camera.

For a second, I was worried. The video and photo from yesterday had weirded me out, but it was possible it would go the same way as the pen at the bottom of the pit. The video could have come from the damaged phone, and the photo could have been my own imagination.

It could be that the strangeness was a one-time deal. An adventure I'd missed out on.

The muscles in my jaw twitched. A cold, hard ball palpitated in my throat. The camera hummed on. I flipped out the recording screen. The Kodak logo blinked on. LEDS fired up.

Please please please let there be stars.

The screen flickered on.

It showed the street. A normal street. There was light. There were people. There were trees. There was light on the ground and shining in the street signs.

But the sky was black and filled with stares.

"Thank you, God," I whispered.

I moved the camera around; the image held. Despite what my eyes told me, the camera showed a starry sky.

I forced myself not to be surprised. I was a journalist. I needed to document the facts before I went into a joy fugue.

"The time is twelve-thirty p.m.," I said into the camera mic. "And the date is March thirteenth. My name is Sam Flautt, reporting for Stranger Danger."

I spun the camera around and the stars wheeled.

"My location is Bloor and Ossington, where an unknown effect seems to be tampering with recording equipment," I said. A teenage couple that should have been in school walked past me, staring. "The source of the effect remains unknown."

My guess was holograms now, or some kind of super-advanced digital media thing. It tied together the people walking on thin air, their creepy disappearance, and the bugged-out footage.

I panned to the ground and gave a good long view of the regular landscape interposed with the strange darkness.

"The interference doesn't prevent light from appearing on the ground," I added. "Just the sky. This is not CGI, and I invite anyone with a camera to come down and try for themselves."

I might edit that bit out later. I didn't want more people on my story just yet.

I headed down Bloor with my camera tilted up.

It had to be just a local anomaly. If every camera across the world, or even just the city, had gone haywire, someone would've noticed by now. If it was local, I had to find out how far this field spread.

After about five minutes of walking, the camera screen flashed white. I froze.

The camera's recording screen showed overcast clouds now.

I backed up two steps. The screen flashed white again.

Black sky now.

I looked around. I stood at an intersection next to Domino's Pizza. A green park bench knelt against the Domino's and a beaten parking meter stood at the edge of the sidewalk. The street across had a music store and a tree. No sign of a top-secret holographic projector.

And yet...

I stepped forward. Flash. Grey, normal sky.

"What's he doing?"

I looked down. A little girl with black pigtails and a pink Dora jacket looked up at me. She clutched her mom's hand.

The mom pulled the girl behind her.

I tested out the change a few more times. Every time I took a step back, the clouds vanished and the sky turned black. Every time I stepped forward, the clouds reappeared, and the normal day reasserted itself on my camera.

The Domino's manager came out and shouted at me to go away. I headed back to the construction pit. Nothing had changed, and when I pointed my camera up, the sky was still black.

I set off in a different direction from last time, once again holding the camera above my head.

I noticed something interesting as I walked: the stars in the camera weren't normal stars. They ran in straight lines across the sky, like grid lines. I wasn't an expert, but I knew that the Little Dipper should've been somewhere.

About five minutes from the construction pit, the sky flashed white in my camera. The false night vanished and the clouds returned.

I returned to the pit again. Nothing had changed there, but I had a hunch.  
Once more, I walked in a different direction. After six minutes, the sky flashed white, and turned normal.

My camera only showed a night sky about five minutes away from the construction pit. The pit lay at the centre of the anomaly.

Very interesting.

The ticker at the bottom of my camera screen said I had twenty-three minutes of battery life remaining. I turned off the camera and headed back to the pit. I popped out my SD card and pushed in a second one. I wanted to upload the footage as fast as possible.

I returned again to the construction pit. The clouds had deepened and the shadows inside the pit had sprawled even farther, swallowing the bottom. I could barely see anything down there—just the tops of pipes and rocks jutting out like trees emerging from a dark fog.

I pulled out my camera and laptop. I set the camera carefully against the railing so that it faced the pit. I sat cross-legged next to the camera with my back to the railing where I'd nearly died yesterday.

I set my laptop down and booted it up. My WIND Internet stick flashed red in the USB port.

I started typing notes into my computer.

Note 1: The anomaly affects digital cameras and camcorders. Should test with chemically developed film.

Note 2: The anomaly only affects digital equipment within a certain range of Bloor and Ossington. Leaving the area negates the anomaly.

Note 3: The "stars" that appear in tapes do not appear to be normal stars. They look like grid lines, squares.

As I hit the enter key to write out Note 4, my camera beeped. At the same time, my computer made a grinding, stuttering sound. My laptop has a row of LEDs at the top of the keyboard. As I watched, they winked off one by one. The screen flashed, and went dark.

I played with the keys. It didn't come back on.

Cold air pricked the back of my neck. The wind became a whisper.

I realized I was alone on the street.

Knowing I shouldn't, I checked my watch.

Blank screen.

What the hell was this?

I stowed away my stuff and zipped up my bag. I started to hear a sound—a quiet, high whine, like a dog whistle. The sound was so high I could hardly hear it. It struck a frequency that made my head feel full and dizzy.

I held my hands to my head. The sound faded and my vision blurred.

I leaned against the railing and shut my eyes. My gut turned. I was going to vomit. I was going to vomit.

I didn't, but God it hurt.

After a few deep breaths, the sensation passed. I felt my fingers shake without telling them to. My knees trembled against the railing.

The queasiness came back, but I didn't pay attention to it. Slowly, I withdrew another pen from my pocket. I grabbed the railing, leaned against it, and threw the pen inside the pit.

The pen dropped.

And stopped.

It sat floating on the air.

Yes.

My stomach twisted, but whatever warning it had for me came too late. I grabbed the railing with my good hand and hoisted myself up.

Overhead, the sky darkened.

CHAPTER THREE: LEVEL ZERO

The railing felt cold and dusty on my palm. I tightened my grip, and pulled myself up.

I didn't stop to look for witnesses. I didn't wonder what the drivers on the street would think of me. I didn't even worry the police would come and arrest me for general strangeness. I just climbed.

I hugged my injured hand under my armpit and let my legs do the bulk of the climb. I hooked my feet one at a time into the steel diamonds, pushed myself up, and slotted my free foot into the next diamond. My good hand kept me stable. I moved it up one diamond at a time—quickly so I didn't lose balance.

The climb felt easy. I'm not an exercise junkie but Stranger Danger lent me some cursory athletics. I also knew the proper technique. I climbed fences in elementary school, and there were tricks: how to swing up and ease the impact on your feet, how to tense your legs at the right angle to propel you upward.

My pen still hung in the air where I'd thrown it. It lay horizontal, just a few feet out from the edge of the pit. The drop loomed beneath it, but the pen didn't give in to gravity. I watched it, willing it to stay.

If the strangeness vanished, if the pen disappeared like those two men, that was fine. Just take me with you first. Just please let me come along.

I still couldn't believe it was real.

My camera and laptop lay bundled and tucked into the railing below me. The equipment was useless without batteries, and if they got stolen I didn't care. All that mattered now was the pen, floating in the air.

I reached the top of the railing. I gripped the top rung and looked below me. The street was suddenly empty. A fat man in a suit was talking on a cell on the other side of the street. The distance and elevation made him look small, like a windup toy. Funny how a little perspective changed things.

I brought my foot up and the railing rubbed dust against my jeans. Down the street, I heard the pock-pock-pock of a crosswalk, the murmur and babble of footsteps, the quiet sounds of quiet lives.

I reached the top of the railing and balanced both feet on the edge. I pulled myself to the railing hard to keep from slipping. My armpit squashed my injured hand. My hand was frigid on my chest.

Below, my pen floated in darkness. Flecks of dust sketched out the invisible barrier like dirt on glass.

I breathed. My heart beat a drumroll in my throat. Goosebumps scrunched my skin.

I swallowed.

And jumped.

Only as I pushed off, only as I felt my stomach lurch and the wind roar in my ears, only as I felt my momentum turn irreversibly away from the railing and from safety, did I wonder if I'd done something stupid.

Time slowed down. I felt the fall in slow detail. The feeling of the railing vanishing from my feet as I jumped above it, the feeling of gravity wrapping around my navel, the feeling of wind, building building building.

I didn't know anything about how the floor worked.

My velocity could cancel out whatever sci-fi mechanism held up my pen. I could fall right through the barrier, smashing my knees to pulp, twisting my pelvis and snapping my rips like twigs. Death would occur.

And if the barrier held, I just jumped from four metres. If the barrier held, I'd still break everything below my waist.

The pit hung like a dream below me, a dream becoming real.

The pen didn't move below me. I was hurtling to it. The darkness of the pit expanded. It bubbled up like dark water on cracked ice. And just like cracking ice, the darkness gave a brief but true glance of an unknowable, unforgiving depth.

I was probably going to die.

Fucking finally.

Faster now. I abandoned myself to the momentum. Faster to the dark. Wind streamed past my face. The world blurred. I closed my tearing eyes.

I stopped.

I didn't feel impact. I didn't feel anything. Speed cancelled out. Force cancelled out. Physics turned my brain accepted it. I didn't even feel dizzy.

I expected a crack, s crunch of splintering bones, or of rupturing blood vessels. Instead there was silence, and it was total.

I opened my eyes.

A pen floated in the air, right next to my feet.

Darkness, forgotten PVC pipe, and a long way down lay below me. Proving that I have no survival instincts, I pushed my weight down hard onto the suddenly solid air.

My feet didn't budge.

I kneeled and pressed my hand down.

My hand didn't budge. I didn't feel resistance. I just didn't feel anything. Physics just didn't extend below my feet.

"Oh my God." I said.

This was like the glass floor at the CN tower—except it wasn't. I jumped up and down and every time I came down my acceleration just stopped.

Amazing.

I looked up.

The sky was full of stars.

#

"Oh my goodness." My breath billowed in white clouds, and I noticed it was cold—like a winter night.

The old sky was gone. Instead of clouds I saw an inky void, chequered with small, blinking stars. The stars shone in neat lines, like God strung them there.

"Oh my God." I said again. I was laughing.

I whooped. My voice echoed in the pit.

I had to call Greg.

The sidewalk rose to the height of my shoulder; the fence rose a million miles above it. I ran over to it. The streets had turned dark, and empty.

My stuff was gone.

I looked down. It had gotten dark; I couldn't see anything below me. I stood above a black hole.

It had gotten very quiet.

Maybe this wasn't a good idea.

I took a long look at the fence. I gingerly reached up—

—and whipped my hand back.

It was cold, like ice.

I took a long look up the railing—black diamonds drawn on a dark sky. Impossibly high and impossibly cold.

I wouldn't be able to climb back up.

I looked around. Sheer clay walls rose around me. Opposite the railing rose a brick wall. No way could I climb it with my hand.

I had a bad feeling about this.

" _You don't have to be afraid."_

The low, calm voice came from all around me. It resonated from the brushed steel railings, the popcorn-textured clay, the empty sky.

I breathed in sharply. The cold air felt thick in my lungs. I coughed it out and thick, noxious clouds drifted around my head like cigarette smoke.

That was Jonathan's voice.

It was colder now.

Kkkkch.

A sound like breaking rocks rumbled in the darkness beneath me. I had a sudden, crazy memory of the garbage masher scene from Star Wars. I instinctively checked the walls. They weren't moving.

Kkkkch.

My feet tensed, ready to run, but nothing happened. I smeared my palms on my pants and they still came up clammy. Pins and needles prickled the back of my throat. The sound of breaking rocks continued.

Kkkkch.

Maybe not rocks breaking, maybe bones crunching. Maybe a giant grinding his teeth.

" _It'll be okay."_

Jonathan's voice again.

Jonathan died seven years ago.

I breathed out. Fuck. Fuck.

I waited in the darkness. The sound kept coming up from the depths below. My breath billowed around me in a smoky halo.

Sweat cooled off my neck and back. The cold had hardened. It bit my fingers and drew them into fists. My cheeks stung. I blinked. The fabric of my jeans stiffened in the cold.

" _It'll be okay."_ Jon's voice said again. Except the voice came from beneath me. It sounded deeper than before, with reverb like a twanging string. Except that wasn't Jon's voice. Human voices didn't echo have that harsh, static buzz.

There was a blue line on the wall.

I didn't notice it before. But it looked as if it had always been there. It hung on the clay wall, a neon blue strip running from where the barrier began, up to about my height. It made no sound, it made no change. It had just appeared.

The crunching noise crackled below. It sounded louder. Closer. My legs shook. I breathed in cold air and shivered.

The line glowed bright. So bright I wondered if one of those strange, geometrically-arranged stars had fallen into this pit. The light blazed through me, eclipsing the stars. It cast the world in an electric, alien blue.

" _It'll be okay."_ Jon's voice said, just like he said before everything went wrong.

The temperature dropped. I felt the cold curl around my body and squeeze inward, driving the heat from me.

I couldn't see anymore. And the blue line glowed brighter.

Brighter...

#

It was dark.

And quiet.

This was not the pit at Ossington. This was someplace new.

I couldn't hear my breathing, just ringing in my ears. I couldn't see anything but a rioting afterimage of the light—crazy colours looping across my eyes, morphing into half-shapes, sizzling and panning out in a wonky kaleidoscope.

The air tasted warm and fried, like it came from a radiator. My muscles twitched and I realized I was cold. I breathed and the heat filled me. Delicious heat. I'd never leave you again.

I didn't know where I was, but I felt safer here. Silence was better than noise. And warmth was better than cold.

I refused to think about Jonathan.

I stood for a long time waiting for the afterimages to clear. After a while, I could see a shining blue line.

I'd begun to secretly hope this would all turn out to be a dream sequence. No such luck. I bent down to feel the floor. It felt like plastic. It felt warm. Behind me the line of blue light glowed just enough for me to see it.

On my hands and knees, I crawled towards the line. I reached out and felt a wall.

The wall felt the same as the floor. Same material, same temperature.

I crawled along the wall, trailing my hands on the floor. At a few metres, I felt a corner. I crawled around some more, and felt an opening into somewhere else.

I circled the room for another minute. I scanned as much as the meagre light allowed, and passed my hands everywhere for any sign of where I was.

The room was about ten metres across—the size of my kitchen, and enough to do a cartwheel in.

The afterimage cleared from my eyes. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I could see the outlines of the room sketched by the blue light.

The room had four walls. One of the walls—the one behind me—housed the blue line. The other three had doorways out.

I felt around the doorways. They were made of the same smooth, warm material as everything else, and they fused perfectly with the floor.

Starting on the wall with the blue line, I hugged the wall, afraid of everything, and gently entered the doorway on the right. The light from the first room filtered in, but only barely. The rest was darkness.

This room was made of the same material and same dimensions as the first one. It had an exit on every wall, leading into pitch blackness.

I edged ahead. The dark fell around me. I held out my hands and felt myself pass across another doorway.

For a long time, I clutched the doorway's arch. My knees shook. My breath came quick and shallow. I didn't want to go back. I didn't want to go forward. I wanted someone to lift me by helicopter and take me home.

I loosed my grip, and ventured into the new, dark room.

I felt around tentatively. This room was the same dimensions as the others. It also had four doorways in each of its walls. How many identical rooms were down here?

I backtracked to the blue line, stumbling in the dark. When I found the original room, I bent down, and sat cross-legged on the ground for a bit. I calmed my breathing, and wondered what to do.

I wanted to believe this was a nightmare, but with my luck it probably wasn't.

"Stupid." I put my face in my hands. "Stupid stupid."

I'd jumped into an open pit. I didn't tell anyone where I was going. And now I sat trapped in some sort of weird dungeon thing.

Except this dungeon-thing didn't feel dangerous. It felt more like a supply cabinet, or maybe a furnace room. It felt somehow useful. I didn't understand it, but I didn't understand furnace rooms either.

The pit hadn't felt useful. The pit just felt scary.

I shivered as I breathed out the last scraps of cold, absorbing the warm, toasted air.

I got up. My shoes squeaked on the strange, alien floor.

The blue line behind me didn't react to my rising. I leaned towards it, and it didn't react to that. I reached to touch it, but I left my fingertips hovering just a foot away; I was trying to psyche it out.

Panic had rattled my reasoning skills, but I reached a conclusion about the line, and this dungeon.

The blue line had appeared in the pit, then I appeared here.

Yesterday the line had also appeared, when those two guys vanished.

Presumably, the two guys had wound up here. They didn't seem afraid at the time, so this place was probably harmless.

If I wandered around enough, I might find those guys. I might find another blue line. Maybe blue lines marked the entrances and exits to this place. If I wandered around enough, I might find a way out. Then I could go to my bed and freak out.

Yes, freaking out sounded like a very good idea.

I swallowed. I really didn't want to return to the pit, where Jon's voice spoke with dark, static edges. So I turned away from the light of the blue line and rested my head against the smooth, warm wall.

I closed my eyes and started really thinking.

Each room seemed to lead into another, identical room. If that was true, they'd look like a grid. I pressed the image of a grid into my head.

If I wanted to find an exit, I'd have to explore as much as possible. To explore as much as possible, I'd make rings around this room—the one with the line—as a starting point, and as the central axis of the rings I made. I'd complete larger and larger concentric rings around the blue-line until I found something. The blue line would keep me anchored, and if I got confused I'd just have to find it again by counting the number of rings I'd made.

To my rattled logic, this idea beat Einstein.

I started from the room to the right of the blue line. Inside that room, I used the dimmed light to find the left doorway. I entered that new room, felt around again, and once again found a doorway on the left. I went through it. I moved slowly. I didn't know if anything lived here. If something did, I didn't want to meet it.

I made careful steps through the dark. I counted every doorway knowing that if I lost my bearings I'd drown in a sea of identical rooms.

Sometimes, I stopped to pass my hands over the walls. I tried to feel for any changes in the rooms. They never grew larger, and they always housed four doorways cut in the exact middle of the wall.

I kept on counting, and I kept on moving. I didn't move blind: the blue line glowed bright when the only alternative was darkness. If I was in a room with doorways that aligned with the blue line's light, I could see it, even thirty rooms down.

The blue line was my new sun—rising and falling as I orbited it.

As I passed carefully through the darkness, I practised my counting. I counted the number of rings I travelled. I counted each room I crossed.

When the counting got boring, I worked out a calculation for how many rooms I crossed as I wound every ring around the blue line. Then I dug out my calculus and figured out my time and rate of progress.

I counted a lot of numbers. And every time I passed the centre line of a ring, I saw the blue light glimmering down the endless halls.

I went from room 110 to 111 to 112. I traversed room 130, 140, and 150, travelling along my orbit, the blue light always punctuating the long stretch of darkness every time I passed it.

After an eternity of marching, I reached room 210. Room 210 was like every other room, differentiated only by the room that came after it: room 211 was the centre-line of ring eleven.

I entered room 211, and looked to my left, expecting to see the blue light glimmering down the hall.

Instead, there was nothing.

The blue light was gone.

#

Maybe I'd counted wrong.

But I hadn't counted wrong.

Panic bubbling up, I turned around. I had to backtrack. Maybe I'd missed something.

I ran into a wall.

"Ah!" I clutched my forehead. It stung. I stumbled back. The floor turned beneath me. My mental compass spun left-right-up-down in what now was total darkness. No sun, not even that brief blue mote of light.

I stretched out and probed for the wall. I misjudged the distance, and stumbled on my knees, reaching blind until I found it—the wall, safe and secure and unmoving.

I drew myself into the wall, breathing hard. My ass wedged into the corner. I swung my head, as if trying to shake the darkness off. But the darkness stayed.

I clung to the wall, not knowing where I was. I forgot the door I'd come from. I forgot the door I'd planned to enter. I forgot my plan. The darkness unmoored me. In my head the neat grids and numbers I'd devised to help me turned grey and brittle and fell apart, sinking into that endless dark.

I closed my eyes. I opened them. It made no difference.

Close.

...

Open.

Close.

...

Open.

Blue light.

Close.

Open.

Blue light again.

What the hell?

My hands patted for the wall behind me. I got a grip, and slowly pushed myself up.

The blue light flickered down the row of rooms in front of me. I leaned in against the doorway and watched it.

It looked like a blue star from here.

It looked beautiful.

Then the light flickered. It sputtered, almost like candle flame.

The blue line hadn't flickered when I'd been there. Was it—powering down or something?

No, that didn't sound right. When I'd seen it, that light looked like it could glow forever.

Unless something was blocking the light.

Unless someone was standing in front of it.

I froze. The light in the distance flickered a final time, and finally glowed normally. If something was there, it had moved to the next room.

I spun away from the light. An infinity of dark rooms stretched ahead of me.

The reappearance of the light had re-established my compass. The light was south. I went towards my imaginary north. When I went to the next room I veered right on an imaginary west.

I cut a zigzag through the maze of rooms. I counted every iteration of north and west. I wasn't going to get lost again.

My head didn't know why I ran. If something or someone was back there, he or she or it might be able to help me out. Maybe those two guys had discovered me. Maybe whoever was in charge here had discovered me. Maybe they just wanted to help.

But to my gut, that sounded too good.

Something had followed me down here, the thing from the construction pit. The thing that stole Jonathan's voice.

I hadn't heard Jon's voice in years. I didn't even look at the family videos anymore for fear of seeing him.

After ten north-west zig-zags I broke into a trot. I couldn't hear anything, but despite the movement, I began to feel cold. At fifteen zig-zags my stride lengthened to jog. At seventeen I was sprinting, and if I could see I'd swear my breath was fogging.

I hit my shoulder on the edge of a doorway. I winced, swore, and hissed the pain out. On reflex, I looked back for the room with the blue light. But I'd lost it about fifty zig-zags ago.

I gritted my teeth. A bead of sweat dripped off my nose and cooled. Why was it so cold now?

"It felt cold." I heard a muffled voice say.

"We'll call them off," said another.

My breath caught. The pounding in my ears had distorted the voices, but I recognized them anyway.

"Did you hear that?"

"This is wrong man. We obviously miscalculated. Let's call it off before we lose someone."

I knew those voices. They belonged to Satchel Bag and Tape Measure Guy.

In the room ahead of me, a beam of light wavered on the ground. After so long in the dark it burned my eyes. It was a flashlight.

I bolted to it.

"Help!" I yelled. My voice echoed around me.

The flashlight stammered back and forth.

"Hear that?"

"Shit!"

"Help!" I yelled again.

"Holy shit what is that!?"

I chased the flashlight beam. It led me to two silhouettes. I threw my arms up. One of them screamed, and slapped me across the face. I hardly felt it—adrenaline burned out the pain.

"What the hell?" The screamer shouted.

"Get me out of here!" I screamed back.

"Who are you?"

"Wait." The guy with the flashlight—I think he was Tape Measure, even though the two men now lacked their defining tools—brought the light up to my face. My eyes burned with the sweet, holy, manmade light.

"Who is this guy?" The screamer shouted. I think he was Satchel Bag.

"Get me out of here." I said. "Please please please. I won't tell anyone about your hologram or  
whatever."

"Shit. How'd he get down here?" Tape Measure asked Satchel Bag.

Satchel Bag didn't answer.

"Look over there." Satchel Bag's shadowed hands rose. A finger pointed behind me.

I turned around.

There was something about ten rooms down. Two tiny lights, the same colour as the blue line, almost like eyes.

The lights blinked.

"Crap." Tape Measure whispered.

The two guys bolted. I ran after them. Someone screamed and it might have been any one of us.

I didn't get it. Maybe the relief of finding people in the lightless dungeon had confused my emotions. I didn't understand why the lights scared them, or why they ran down the doors that they did. If there was an order to the rooms they chose to go down, I didn't see it.

The two guys ran fast. They didn't tire and they screamed a lot.

It was even colder now. The fringe of my hair crinkled with frozen sweat. It hurt to breath.

My feet dragged on the ground. I forced them to move. I forced my arms to swing and my body to keep close to these two guys. But I began to fall behind.

After a while, I looked over my shoulder.

The twin dots weren't there. I stopped.

"Come on retard!" Tape Measure shouted.

We ended up in another room with a blue line. Tape Measure's flashlight bobbed, wavered, and vanished. The blue line grew brighter. It cut across my vision and turned everything to blue, then to white.

" _It'll be okay."_ Jon's voice said behind me.

I felt warmth. Carpet underneath my palms. Blurry light.

"What the—" a female voice said. "Who's this guy? Hey, why're you crying?"

CHAPTER FOUR: BLUE LIGHT

So much light after so much dark. So much noise after so much silence. So many people after so long alone.

And Jon.

Oh God, Jon.

I was in a basement. It was a nice basement though: the kind of smoky, dusty, comfortable place where families put old furniture before renting a U-Haul for the final dump, the kind of place you could spill a beer and not have to mop it up, where teenagers could have sex on the sofas and not worry about getting caught.

The walls here were wood-panelled. The ceiling was done in papery tiles with flower patterning. Some of the tiles were missing. The gaps revealed pink fibreglass stuffing and rusty iron pipes. The TV was on; a Wii hummed in front of it, next to an inactive Xbox 360 and a pile of fluorescent green game boxes.

It was disorienting. My memory of the long dark, of the dungeon beneath the pit, of blue lights in endless rooms, crawled in the back of my head now, infecting my sight. The memory cast a shadow on my perceptions. It gave an unreal tinge to the room, and its occupants.

I didn't know if I should be scared.

There were two sofas—smelling slightly of cat piss—next to a coffee-table with one leg superglued on at a wrong angle. Tape Measure and Satchel bag sat me in one of the sofas. They sat on the other. Without their implements Tape Measure became Laurent and Satchel Bag became Josh.

It was definitely them: the men from the pit. And they looked just like I remembered. Laurent was still a hipster in plaid, tight pants, and generic smugness. And I think Josh was wearing the very same stormy grey hoodie I saw him in yesterday.

There were two others here—a Sikh guy with a patchy beard named Amrith, and a girl named Lena. Lena had gone upstairs two minutes ago, and still wasn't back.

Laurent and Josh kept quiet. They may have been trying to scare me, but that was hard with Amrith playing Mario Galaxy 2 on the Wii.

Josh broke the silence first. "Who are you?"

"What?" I asked. "Who are—"

"How'd you get here?" Laurent cut in.

"Jesus guys," Amrith sighed. He lazily swung the Wiimote up, causing Mario to pound a Koopa Troopa. He looked over at me. "Hey, are you any good at Mario Kart?"

I shook my head.

"Got them!"

The girl named Lena came back down the stairs, cradling five misty bottles of Mountain Dew Red. She sidestepped the sofas and laid the Mountain Dew down on the coffee table.

Lena had four gold earrings on her right ear—the only remarkable feature on her otherwise plain face. The earrings were all identical: solid, golden rings. For no reason, they reminded me of the rings I'd seen punched in the back of an old Chinese sword at the Royal Ontario Museum. The rings on that sword were iron, but they had the same thickness, the same utilitarian plainness.

Lena got up and grabbed a Wiimote from the fireplace mantle.

"Did you find the star?" She asked. Amrith clucked and shook his head. "Oh you suck."

"Love you too." Amrith replied, flicking the Wiimote.

"Let me, I know where it is." Lena said.

She started to say something to me, but stopped. For a second, her eyes flickered like she was scared of something. But the look vanished, and was replaced by bland disinterest.

"There's enough Dew for everyone." She said.

"You take over," Amrith said to Lena. He unstrapped his Wiimote and laid it on top of the TV. Lena took control of the plumber onscreen.

"We should pretend we're gonna kill him or something." Lena suggested as she navigated Mario through a new level. Amrith picked two Mountain Dews from the coffee table. He passed one to me.

I took the bottle and cleared my throat. "I—"

Amrith sat next to me. As he did, he caught my eye and something on his face shifted from polite curiosity to hard fear. But, like Lena, this expression faded.

"Do you know what Level Zero is?" Amrith asked softly.

Josh and Laurent stared. Lena turned to stare. The volume of the room dropped.

"Do you know what that was back there?" Laurent said, even quieter. He sat up and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "Have you ever been there before?"

"The dungeon?" I asked.

"Yes, how'd you get down there?" Amrith asked.

I told them about the invisible floor on Bloor and Ossington, the sky full of stars, and my jump into oblivion. I told them about the dungeon, the blue line, and how I'd lost it. I didn't tell them about Jonathan's voice. They didn't need to know that.

"You jumped into the pit?" Laurent asked me when I finished.

"That's sort of... crazy." Amrith added.

I did not refute this claim.

No more questions came. Lena kept playing Mario. The others sat back. I sipped the Mountain Dew. It tasted like cherries, having freaky sex on my tongue.

Josh clapped his hands together.

"So we gonna blank him now or what?" He asked.

"Look at his eyes." Lena said to the TV. She paused the game, unstrapped the Wiimote, and placed it next to Amrith's on top of the TV.

"What?" I asked.

Lena turned off the Wii with her big toe. She trotted past us and vanished up the stairs leading out the basement.

"We can't blank him," Amrith agreed.

Laurent pushed himself up from the sofa, planted a hand on the coffee table between us and bent forward like a man inspecting a dead animal. He frowned. Deep cut wrinkles spread on his forehead, tickling the tops of his thick, black glasses

"Ah crap." he said.

"What?" I asked.

Josh got up too, he stepped on top of the table and came down with one foot still on it. He leaned in close. He smelled like unwashed hair.

"What colour are your eyes?" Amrith asked. A clomp-clomp-clomp came down the stairs. Lena emerged with a green hand-mirror.

"My eyes are brown." I said.

"Yeah." Amrith said. "I bet."

Lena shouldered past Amrith and Laurent. She handed me the mirror. I took it.

My eyes in the mirror were a bright, electric blue.

"You've been marked fucko," Josh said.

#

It was dark outside, and cold. But it was normal dark and normal cold, the kind I could deal with. Luckily, the sky was black with clouds. I didn't want to see stars for a while.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

Amrith gently pushed me forward.

They had taken me outside the house, into the driveway.

Funny. I'd started at Bloor and Ossington, but I'd come out in a tiny suburb. It was quiet out here, not like my apartment in Etobicoke, or downtown: just chirping crickets, buzzing lights, and the sound of kids playing basketball a few houses down.

The driveway held a white Pontiac and a bright blue Yaris. Flower beds lined both sides of the driveway; the soil looked neatly tilled for spring.

Lena opened the door to the Pontiac's shotgun sear. I got in. She shut the door behind me.

In the rearview mirror, my eyes shone bright blue. Bright cyan LEDs plugged into a confused, frightened face. They were glowing now.

I looked away.

Where was the hospital ceiling? Where was the wake-up call? This had to be a bad dream, or a coma from when I jumped into the pit. So where was the crappy "it was all a dream" ending? Where was my family, waiting by my bedside?

Amrith took the wheel and Lena took the seat behind him. Laurent and Josh got into the Yaris. I leaned my head on the window. The glass felt cold on my forehead. Too real for a dream.

"Where are we going?" I asked again.

"To Ossington," Amrith said. "You found something dangerous, and we have to take care of it."

Amrith pulled a set of keys from his pocket. His keychain was the Companion Cube from Portal. "Seat belts." He said.

I closed my eyes. I didn't wake up. There was just an onslaught of clear and healthy sensory perception. The way the heating blew lukewarm air in my face, the way Amrith's keys jingled against the Companion Cube, the feel of the car seat on my ass.

I opened my eyes. Still here.

"We also want to look at your camera," Lena added. "Your footage could help us understand a lot more about Level Zero—what you called the dungeon."

I took a shaky breath, and swallowed.

"I understand, I guess." I said. "But why'd you handcuff me?"

Lena and Amrith both shrugged.

I tried for the third time to pull the handcuffs apart and release my hands from my back. The bindings held.

Amrith and Lena didn't try to stop me from struggling. Lena scooched behind me and pulled my seatbelt on. It clicked into place, and she went back behind Amrith.

Beside us, the Yaris started up. Laurent and Josh pulled out of the driveway and headed down the street.

Amrith started the car. Lena pulled on her own seatbelt.

I gave up trying to break free. "Where do you even get handcuffs?" I panted.

"Sex shops," Lena said. "They're surprisingly strong."

I pulled at the cuffs again. The metal dug into my wrists. The chain links creaked, but didn't give.

"Don't worry," Amrith said. He checked his blind spot and backed us out of the driveway. "We'll let you go as soon as we take a look at your camera. Then you'll never have to see us again."

Lena pursed her lips at Amrith. He raised his eyebrows. There was another conversation there, one I wasn't getting.

Amrith took us down the street. The headlights passed over the dark streets. It was garbage day tomorrow—raccoon-proof garbage cans, bundled eco-waste, and one sofa lined the driveways.

"What happened to my eyes?" I asked.

No answer. The car rolled forward. Far ahead, I saw a copse of shadows crouched like a wild dog ready to leap. As we got closer, it turned out to be a bush.

Lena took out a Blackberry, one of the new ones with a touch screen. She slid behind me again and held it out in front of my eyes.

"Here," she said. "Imagine the world is like this Mario game here."

Two points of blue light glowed in the Blackberry screen. A scream caught in my throat when I realized the lights were from me.

"What the hell is wrong with my eyes?" I asked louder than I wanted. I pulled at the handcuffs again. They held. I pulled harder.

"Oh for God's sake." Lena reached into her pocket and withdrew a pewter key with a pink plastic heart at the end. "I'll take the cuffs off. We didn't mean anything by it—we just haven't used them in a while."

"I chased a half-naked Santa yesterday but there is something wrong with you guys!"

"I get that you're scared now Sam," Amrith said calmly. "But believe it or not so are we. You nearly died. And if you did, it would've been our fault."

"And now you're in danger," Lena added. She reached behind me and I felt her hands probe for the handcuffs. She found the keyhole, slid in the key, and twisted. The cuffs popped off my wrists.

"So, for the next little while, please just hear us out. Then you can decide what to do. We won't bother you, and you won't bother us." Amrith said.

It sounded like a plan. And since Amrith had sped up to sixty, it wouldn't be safe to karate chop his throat and steal the car.

"What's wrong with my—" I began.

"You've been marked by a Stalker Man." Lena said. She took away the handcuffs and slid them both onto her right hand. They clicked smartly over her wrist. "They're like—ghosts. They live in Level Zero."

"On ends of cycles, usually the Stalker Men are quiet, and Level Zero becomes this blank place." Amrith said. He turned into a new street. "But tonight it looked like one was still running around."

"Okay." I did not understand any of that. "So what's Level Zero?"

Lena brought up her Blackberry again. "Imagine," she said repeated, "that the world works like Mario."

She pressed clicked on a mushroom-shaped app. The Mario Bros theme song exploded out the speakers; the title screen for the arcade version of Super Mario sprang up on the Blackberry.

Lena held the Blackberry out to me so I could watch her play. She cleared the first level in thirty seconds. I wanted to scream but I kept my mouth shut.

"Level Zero is like, junk data." She said, over the Mario song.

She entered the second level, the one that goes underground. She sent her Mario forward, and then jumped into a black space.

For a second, I thought she'd just jumped into a Game Over, but as the screen moved forward I saw a sliver of green; there was a platform there, hidden just at the edge of the screen. I'd played a lot of Mario but never noticed that platform before.

"Here, you ever see this glitch?" She asked. I shook my head.

Lena continued on the hidden platform. On screen, Mario started vibrating up and down. A green pipe appeared, and Lena walked into it.

The screen went black. The music cut.

"This is a hidden level." Lena said. "The designers never programmed it in here—it's just a bunch of random data and programs that somehow formed a world."

The screen flashed back to colour.

Lena's Mario stood in an overworld. The colour was off—mixed purples and pinks overlaid on the usual colour-scheme. And for some reason the fish enemies were flying through the air.

The music was back, but it sounded deeper, and slightly off-key. I didn't like it.

"Cool huh?" Lena sent Mario forward, jumping over the flying fish monsters. The music bugged me but its atonality didn't register on Lena's face. "Later on you see Princess Peach just floating in the air. It's creepy. Cracked.com said it was one of the creepiest video game glitches ever."

"Anyway," Amrith cut in. "Level Zero is like this hidden level we think."

Lena turned off her Blackberry and tucked it into her jeans. "The Stalker Men live inside Level Zero. We think they're junk data too—"

"Junk data?" I asked.

"We think the world is like a computer program." Lena said.

Amrith grunted.

"Josh and Laurent and me think the world is a lot like a computer program." Lena said. Amrith nodded.

I closed my eyes. I felt unmoored again—like a man who looks up to the stars and finds they've all changed. No more little dipper, no more Orion—just grid lines across a camera feed.

Somehow I was Mario now.

Amrith turned onto a bigger road. Streetlamps flew by the dark windows. Flecks of rain dotted the windows.

"Turn the heat up," Lena murmured. Amrith swung a few dials on the dashboard.

"We can explain more when we get to Ossington." Amrith said to me. He looked like he wanted to pat my shoulder, but thought better of it.

"When I first saw Level Zero, I nearly crapped myself." Amrith said.

"Got it." I put my head between my knees. Warm air spilled on the back of my neck. I swallowed. My stomach felt sick. The car shuddered, and my head bounced lightly against the glove compartment.

These people.

These disorienting people.

They'd called that dungeon thing Level Zero.

They'd casually wrecked conventional reality using Super Mario.

The car rumbled ahead. Streetlights drifted by, pouring strips of light across my feet. The rain picked up. I heard it patter on the glass like gravel shifting. I closed my eyes.

I had to be dreaming.

But, a voice in my head said, crystal clear, you're not.

If Amrith and Lena were right, I'd discovered a glitch in the universe.

This was the discovery of the millennium.

A breakthrough in how we understood everything.

And the only people who knew about it were a bunch of nerds.

#

By the time we entered downtown, the last bands of orange twilight had sunk with the sun under Lake Ontario. Cars crammed the streets and headlights shone through rainy darkness. The clouds hung low, and the skyscrapers we passed to get to Ossington rose into a fog.

I still hadn't woken up.

Amrith and Lena kept talking about Level Zero. It was ridiculous. Suspecting it was true made me want to throw up.

"We think Level Zero works like a computer program because of Laurent and Josh. They're both physics masters." Lena said. "You know quantum mechanics? How that cat is alive and dead inside a box? That trippy shit?"

I had never heard of Schroedinger's cat referred to as "trippy shit" before, but I nodded. My stomach shifted, squeezed and swallowed.

I hadn't eaten since breakfast. Terror had kicked back the grand, heaving hunger that would have made me miserable, but that hunger had been replaced with a cold, draining sense of emptiness.

"Well they say that Level Zero is like, an inevitability of that stuff." Lena "There's this—"

Lena kept talking. I leaned my head against the window. My breath brushed fog against the cold glass. One of my eyes reflected bright blue in the fog.

I closed my eyes and warm tears welled behind my eyes. I pushed them back.

I didn't have to believe this.

"And then there's the Stalker Men." Lena said quietly.

Amrith looked over at me. At my glowing eyes. He blinked and turned away.

"Uh, the Stalker Men are also like junk data." Lena murmured to her lap.

"I wanted to call them Grudgers" Amrith said. "You know, like those monsters from the Grudge?"

"Love that movie." I said absently. Fog danced to my words on the glass.

"Original Japanese right?" Amrith asked.

"American remake sucked so bad." I agreed.

"Bit where that little kid is in the elevator?" Lena added.

"Awesome." I said.

I waited for someone to tell me what the Stalker Men did. No one volunteered, so I extrapolated from the name that they stalked stuff.

Somewhere far away, an ambulance wailed.

We were near the Ossington-Bloor intersection now. I could see the familiar shops and landmarks. The Pizza Pizza that marked the border of the anomaly was coming up. Its green and orange sign glowed pure and bright in the gritty, rainy night. Despite my unease, the image of a hyper-real, steaming pizza burst into my mind. To my empty stomach, the image was good enough to set off a pang in my gut, like a prisoner rattling the bars of his cell. Oh man, the crust would be all greasy, and the cheese would still be slightly melted, and there'd be broccoli because broccoli tasted great on pizza and anyone who disagreed was stupid. Pizza was fucking awesome.

"What you caught Laurent and Josh doing was a speed run," Lena said. The neon green-orange Pizza Pizza sign drifted behind her head and disappeared down the street. "That's like, a competition we have. We link gates in Level Zero and race through—"

"You should call Haze," Amrith interrupted. "Tell him we called it off."

"I messaged him." Lena said.

Amrith raised his eyebrows and tilted his head just slightly at me. Lena shook her head.

We reached Bloor and Ossington in silence. The rain tap-tapped the car roof and wound rivers down the windows. The rain hammered the streets, and pounded up a fog. I couldn't see to the next block.

"Turn left," I instructed Amrith.

Amrith turned. The headlights of the car flashed down the side street I was now so familiar with.

The street was dead. A few metres away the Bloor traffic honked and stopped and splashed the sidewalks with rainwater, but no one needed to go to this tiny road now.

Wet leaves and scraps of flyers lined the street. Laurent's blue Yaris sat pulled to the side beside the pit, just after where the corridor made by the construction railing went back up to the sidewalk. Two shadows that looked like Laurent and Josh stood in the corridor, out of the rain.

Amrith pulled up behind them.

We got out of the car. The moon wasn't out. The asphalt glared with the streetlamp's reflected light. The road's imperfections—the patchwork pavement, the shrubs and weeds poking through the sidewalk stones, all loomed bolder and bigger in the half-dark.

I winced. The rain fell cold on the back of my neck. Droplets pooled around my eyes and dripped down my nose like tears.

Behind me, Lena slammed the car door shut. A car roared past us and splashed cold, gritty water on my ankles.

The rain fell back as we entered the corridor. A sheet of cardboard above us, framed in yellow light, blocked most of it. Nevertheless, a thin mist poured off the sheet and fell down us like a waterfall.

Josh stepped towards us as we neared. His hood was pulled up. His face was hidden by the dark.

"The backpack was gutted," Josh shouted as we approached. He held out a black plastic case. "And we found this near the railing."

Rain beaded off the casing. I looked at Josh.

"It was already soaking," Josh said. "Sorry."

My backpack lay near the railing where I left it. It lay on its side empty and waterlogged. All the zippers yawned open; my laptop was gone.

I bent down and hoisted up the backpack. Water splashed out of it. Disgusted, I dropped it and kicked it to the railing, where it flopped against the metal beams.

"So you jumped in there?" Amrith asked, pointing to the pit. The rain muted his voice.

"After all my stuff powered off," I said. I wrapped my arms around me and shivered.

The pit.

I glanced sideways at it, resenting its presence, half afraid of what I might see. But it looked normal now: empty, and mundane.

I spun on my heels to face the pit. Laurent and Josh parted for me.

I rubbed the wet metal railing with my palms. I'd been here only a few hours ago; I'd been awake then. Now I was drifting in some uneasy nightmare.

Water glimmered at the bottom of the pit, pinpricked with rain. The cardboard signs rattled in the wind. I put my sprained hand on them and tried to gather the cold into it to kill the pain.

Josh peeked over the top. He rolled his shoulders like a fighter entering the ring.

"I'm going in." He said.

Josh grabbed the railing bars and yanked himself up. The wind and rain billowed his baggy hoodie. He scrambled up the fence without pause and mounted the top.

From down here, the climb looked small. Josh planted his feet one by one with a casual laboriousness, like he was on round three of a Stairmaster workout. It looked easy. But I don't think I'd ever climb up that railing again: I knew how high it felt when you were up there.

And I knew what was on the other side.

Josh planted a foot on the top of the railing. Then he jumped.

Dropped.

Stopped in mid-air.

Fuck.

I groaned.

During the card ride, I'd hoped. I'd really hoped, that these people were just crazies. Even that I was crazy. It was a better explanation than the one Lena had explained back in the car, and therapy was cheap in Toronto.

But now, Josh walked on air. And I realized with a sinking feeling that the others hadn't flinched. This was normal for them.

In the pit, Josh lifted his head side to side, angling his head away from the rain. Now, I noticed a glassy surface beneath his feet.

It was rainwater.

Now that Josh stood inside the pit, the rainwater streaming from above stopped just at his feet, sketching the invisible barrier that held him up.

Josh noticed the water slowly rising to skirt his shoelaces. He lifted his feet. I couldn't see a sneer on Josh's hidden face, but he could look disgusted with his entire body.

Josh looked around some more. He inspected the walls, ran his hands over the clay, and I think swore to himself a couple of times. Finally, he ran over to us.

"You said there was a barrier here?" He shouted.

I nodded.

Josh hugged his arms and looked around. He jogged over to where the blue line had been.

Josh reached into his pocket. The darkness didn't let me see much. He put a shadowed arm to the wall and tapped it.

Josh ran back to us. The rain was piling up. Wide puddles were forming on the surface, but they moved strangely; drifting into strange shapes, forming and dispersing by themselves to no apparent force. And it could have been my imagination, but the water seemed to vibrate—almost imperceptibly, like a hummingbird's wing. I remembered how force had cancelled out when I landed on the barrier. Maybe the water's behaviour was somehow affected.

"Gate's gone!" Josh shouted. "Need a blank!"

Laurent turned away from the railing. He flexed his jaw and shook his head like he'd just heard some bad news.

Lena reached to her face. Her hands spun around her ear, and came back with one of her plain, golden earrings. She slipped her arm between the railings.

"Heads up!" Lena shouted. She flicked the earring like a coin, and it flipped up to Josh's face. Josh snatched it out of the air. He jogged back to the wall, and held the earring against it.

Amrith patted my shoulder and leaned in to my ear. "The Stalker Man must have put in a fake barrier. We always thought it was possible but it's never been done before."

I didn't know what that meant for me; I stared at Josh, still holding the earring against the wall.

"He's getting a vibration now," Amrith said. "Hopefully we'll be able to track the Stalker Man based on what we find. Then we can keep you safe."

"Keep me safe from what?" I asked.

Amrith bit his lip.

Inside the pit, Josh pocketed the ring and trotted over. He grabbed the railing, pulled himself up, and made a quick climb over. He gripped the top of the fence and slowly climbed down the other side, returning to us. By the time I remembered to look, the barrier was gone. I don't know what happened to the water.

"It's a fake program," Josh announced as he came down. The wind roared as he spoke, and threw the rain sideways. "My gate's gone."

"What do Stalker Men do?" I asked Amrith.

"Christ," Laurent muttered. He kicked the fence.

"What do Stalker Men—" I began.

"How smart do you think this one is?" Lena asked.

Josh dug around in his pocket, retrieved the gold earring, and thrust it at me. I took it on reflex.

"Smarter than this fucker." Josh sneered.

I punched Josh.

The blow came fast, before I knew I'd thrown it. My fist hurtled from my hip, shot out, and sank into Josh's ribs. Impact shook my arm.

It was stupid. But so was he.

I didn't hear much after that. The scene went slow and fast at the same time. Laurent went to Josh and Amrith held up a hand and shouted something mediating. I shouted something back and jammed the earring into my pocket.

I backed away. Laurent and Amrith stepped towards me but I balled my fists and they backed off.

They grew smaller and smaller as I retreated: Josh kneeling on the ground clutching his side. Laurent swearing. Lena hiding her face in her hands and Amrith watching me go.

#

My car was in the parking lot I left it in. I'd paid for all-day parking, so I didn't even have a ticket. I drove home and didn't think about anything.

I live on the second floor of Horizon Apartment Complex, room 217. The building sits a few blocks away from Lakeshore, right next to an empty field that'll probably be a new apartment building soon. The apartment is in Etobicoke, hovering between Toronto proper and Mississauga's Port Credit.

The lights were off when I came in. Greg wasn't in either. Good. I'd rode the elevator to get up, and my eyes were still blue. I didn't want to explain why. I wasn't sure I could explain.

I'd noticed something about my eyes: they only glowed in the dark. In lighted areas, they just looked dark blue, like I'd put on contact lenses.

I don't have a lot of girls over to my apartment, but when I do they called it 'unique.' I'm not sure what that meant. We aren't allowed to paint the off-white walls, but Greg had put up a lot of paintings—some reprints, most originals from Toronto artists. The furniture is a little schizophrenic since most of it we got from garage sales or Ikea.

But it's clean, quiet, and most of our neighbours are old people who don't bother us. It's also a distance from my parents in Brampton.

I closed the door behind me and turned the lock. It thudded into place and I felt a bit better.

The earring felt cold in my pocket. Might have been my imagination. I took it out and left it on the table in my hallway.

The lights were off in my apartment. I edged forward, navigated my way to the kitchen, and found the fridge. I pulled out a pack of Coors.

On the way to my sofa, I caught my eyes in the TV.

In the black screen, my eyes glowed blue. Two lights in the darkness.

CHAPTER FIVE: THE STALKER MEN

The snow fell thick and heavy from a black sky, from clouds that choked the moon and the ambient, glowing light of refracting stars. The snowflakes fell fat and heavy like marshmallows, caking the streets. The snow clogged the gutters. It buried cars. It massed in crooks of naked trees and turned the night into a black and white photo.

I shifted on my feet, letting the snow pile up on the shoulders of my jacket.

I stood on the sidewalk outside UTM's Davis building, the gigantic slab of concrete that held the oldest lecture halls on campus. The lights were still on inside, but the Davis building was empty now. The last bus left ten minutes ago.

My phone buzzed in my palm. I flipped it open.

"Talk to me Jon." I said. My words made clouds in the air. Flakes of snow dusted my bare knuckles, then melted away with a feathery feeling.

Jon's voice came muffled through the phone. "Yeah. Sorry I'm late. You'll see me in a minute."

"Got it," I folded the phone and dropped it in my jacket pocket.

I took a deep breath and blew a column of mist into the air. When I was a kid, we'd use the cold air to pretend we were smoking. I was nineteen now, and I'd tried smoking. It made my mouth taste like ass.

Davis was only accessible by a narrow, single-lane road. The road was the best way into campus: it cut through the woodlot, wound through the hills and ponds dotting the parks, and made a clear, clean path around the Davis building and up to Mississauga Road. I watched the road, and waited for Jon.

A muffled, comfortable silence had settled with the snow. The birds were quiet or gone, the crickets long burrowed beneath the ground. Just the buzzing streetlights at the side of the road, and the sound of snow settling.  
Stillness followed the silence. Outside, with no people and no traffic, it was easy for me to think time had stopped. The only exception was the snow, drifting from the sky in thick, white sheets.

A pair of headlights lanced the woodlot. The twin lights mounted the hill beyond the circle road, and glimmered through the dark trees. They passed across the road, and turned the snow to sparks.

The headlights belonged to a blue Honda. As I watched, the Honda rounded the turn of the circle road. The engine roared. The driver honked. A white hand waved in the window.

I hitched my backpack and headed to the street. The car skidded to a stop, ploughing snow up around the tires.

In the window, Jonathan reached behind his seat and popped the back seat open. I yanked the door and threw my backpack into the seat. Snowflakes scattered on the black fabric.

"Exam went okay?" Jon asked.

I shut the passenger door and went around to the shotgun seat. Jon opened that one for me too.

"I'm guessing no." He said as I sat down.

"It went fine." I pulled the door shut. The thump of the door gave a verbal period.  
Jon revved the engine. The car squealed. The wheels spun, spun, and finally kicked us over the piled snow.

I shrugged off my coat and threw it in the back seat. I didn't like snow, and I didn't like being wet. I pried off my boots and tucked them in the back too. Finally I peeled off my wet, dirty socks, and tossed the damp woolen balls behind me. I dialed the heater up to its highest setting.

Jonathan raised an eyebrow. "Comfortable enough?"

I dialed the radio to 97.3 ROCK. Finger Eleven blasted out Paralyser. I grunted to indicate I was now comfortable.

"Cool." He said.

The headlights cast the circle road in stark light, like a Polaroid with too much flash. The road stretched white and clear ahead of us, while the woods around us loomed dark and murky. The streetlights came rarely. Long stretches of bare tree trunks flashed in the headlights as we passed. They reminded me of tiger stripes.

The wipers squeaked across the glass. The heating whooshed on and off as the car rumbled through the snow. Finger Eleven's Paralyser cried out tinny and ragged on the ancient speakers.

I shuddered. Jon glanced over at me.

"So Cheri facebooked me. She said you haven't spoken to Nicole in a while."

I grunted. I wasn't getting along with Nicole at the moment.

The headlights hit a stop sign. Jon passed by without stopping.

I shot him a dirty look. "That's two demerit points."

"No one's here." Jon said.

"Doesn't make a difference." The sign grew smaller and smaller in the window. "It was under a light and everything."

"Rules only apply if someone's watching." Jon said. We entered a stretch of road bordered by trees on both sides.

"Also don't tell Mom I said that," Jon added.

I grunted.

We completed the turn around circle road and came to the lights on Mississauga Road. Jon took a right without checking for traffic or pedestrians. The car skidded.

"Are you drunk?" I asked.

Jon puffed out his cheeks and stuck out his tongue, like one of those girls on the animes he watched. The face looked displaced on my tall, muscled, five-o'clock-shadowed brother.

"Tell me about the exam or about Nicole," he said. "I'm not going to listen to your crap music for the next hour."

It was half an hour back to Brampton. "Test was okay," I said. "Except I had to say a bunch of stuff about Kublai Khan."

"That poem you hate?"

"Yep."

"So you slammed it?"

I shook my head.

"There are, rules and stuff," I said.

The snow on Mississauga Road glowed orange in the streetlamps. Jon pushed the car through it. If it kept snowing like this, the tracks we left would be covered by morning.

We didn't usually get heavy, soft snow like this. Usually it came hard and windy, with icy teeth that burned cheeks and shook the dead leaves out of trees. This snow fell like a blanket.

"You know I read that thing after you were complaining about it," Jon said. "I don't get it."

"It's just a stupid opium dream," I said. "Some guy gets high and writes about it."

"You don't have to say it's good if you think it's stupid."

I bit my lip. Kublai Khan was more than stupid.

"There are rules though," I said. "My prof has this fu—stupid idea that art is this spontaneous thing you can't control."

I bit the rest of my opinions down, because if I let them out I'd never stop.

If art was truly spontaneous, something truly uncontrollable, studying art was pointless. If it couldn't be controlled, it couldn't be understood. Professor Simon's idea of the poem shat on the money I paid her to teach me.

"So write that out," Jon said, like it was easy.

"It's not just the profs," I said. "It's the fucking—sorry—stupid people in the classes who fawn over them and enable this sort of sycophantic clusterfu—orgy. Thing."

"There's no meaning in any of it," I said.

I looked out the window, at the dark streets racing by. There wasn't meaning there either, just cold snow and wind.

"And it's so boring," I finished. "Really, really boring. We're not learning methods or theories, just interpretations."

"And you haven't asked your prof about this?" Jon asked.

"There are rules," I repeated.

Jon was silent for a while. After a bit, he turned the radio to 91.1 and soft jazz mumbled through the speakers. Jon thought about whatever Jon thought about. I thought about rules.

After Jon died, I forgot about rules.

#

"Sam? You up?"

Horrible brightness shocked the living room.

"Aaaah," I held a hand up to shield my eyes. My vision blurred. I blinked and felt stinging tears pour through my crusted eyes. "What the hell man?"

The living room looked worse now; that was my fault.

I felt a lot worse too; that was on me as well.

I'd made a camp on the sofa in front of our TV. Aside from pillows, blankets, and two flashlights, I'd also stockpiled beer and food. The overall presentation did not look good. It didn't even look sane.

The food was on the other end of the couch: a sandwich made of bologna, cheese, and tomato. It was teetering on the sofa arm, dangerously close to falling. The beer was even closer: an empty pack of Coors lay on the floor, neatly squared against the sofa. The pack's handle was ripped, and the tear broke apart the pack's printed mountain scenery to show corrugated cardboard. More importantly, the tear made two bottles roll out under the sofa when I opened them. I'd spent a good five minutes last night trying vainly to retrieve the bottles without getting off the couch.

Greg, standing at the entrance of the hallway in suit-jacketed sternness, did not look impressed. I motioned for him to turn off the light. He shook his head.

He wormed out of his jacket and folded it across his arm. "Sorry man."

"I was sleeping." I lied. I hadn't really slept all night. I'd dozed. Every ten minutes my head had nodded off, and I'd entered a zone of grey thoughtblurs and semi-restfullness. But every time, I'd jerked awake, checked my mirror, and saw the blue eyes staring back at me.

I shifted my ass and bottles clinked around me. My back hurt from sitting too long.

"How's the arm?" Greg draped his jacket lightly over the TV.

I looked at my arm. Purple bruises swam across the wrist and knuckles. A lukewarm Coors bottle nestled under it. It radiated sickly warmth.

"Needs more cold." I coughed, then groaned. "What time is it?"

"Eight o'clock." Greg said. He raised an eyebrow at the bottles. "You realize it's a work day."

Eight o'clock.

I scrunched my face and hoped sleep would come. It didn't. I just felt nervous, sick, miserable.

"Where were you?" I asked. I felt around and realized I still had pants on. Point one for Sam.

"Late night at work," Greg said as he walked over to his room. He vanished into the hallway and shouted: "Decided to stay at Carrie's. You should've seen it—there was this GIS report due because of some new software. Everyone was going crazy."

"That does sound crazy," I said. I eyed the light switch on the other side of the room. I wished Greg would turn it off.

Greg came back into the living room. He'd changed into a new pair of khakis and a starched, daffodil dress shirt. He buttoned the cuffs and asked me without looking up, "So are you going to work today or what?"

"Not feeling good," I said. I curled my clammy toes against the sofa.

"Wonder why," Greg said. He got both cuffs buttoned and patted the shirt down. "By the way, turns out the Shirtless Santa's had a Facebook page all along. I think he manages it himself."

"I see." I said. I lurched upright and planted both feet on the ground. I clumsily grabbed at the table and heave myself up. The blood rushed out of my head. Stars exploded in my eyes. My legs gave way and I crashed back into the sofa. Bottles clinked and the sofa springs creaked to welcome me back.

Looked like I was staying put.

"Anyway, we'll do something simple next week," Greg said. He retrieved his suit jacket from the TV and put it back on. He pulled the lapels and the fabric fwumped like a sail in high wind. "I guess I'll see you tonight?"

I had hardly heard him. I just nodded. My eyes closed. My head spun. Colours danced behind my eyelids.

"Cool. Uh, feel better." Greg's disembodied voice said.

I heard footsteps, and the sound of an opening door.

"Wait," I groaned. "Wait—about that photo you took—"

The door clicked shut. Greg was gone. I was alone.

Well, not quite alone.

I waited for the stars to pass. They did. The dizziness cleared and I felt the machinery in my head slowly choke, rattle, and finally jerk to life like an old engine with a few kilometers left in it.

I slowly patted myself to get an idea of where all my body parts were. I found my hips, found my jeans, and then felt a tiny, hard circle inside my front pocket.

Fuck.

I reached into the pocket. My hand came out with a simple gold earring looped around my index finger. After so long in my pocket, it matched my body heat perfectly. Greasy whorls smudged the metal where I'd touched it.

So, it was still here.

I thought of getting up again, but my head was still reeling from my last attempt. Instead, I threw off the blanket.

I leaned over the sofa and looked down. The floor stared back at me. I had to get down.

But how would I—

I leaned too far. My balance vanished. I whipped my hands out but they struck empty air. I twisted. The blanket tangled my legs. I was dropping. Down down do—

I was on the floor now.

Mission accomplished.

I raised my head. The dark green blanket tugged my feet as I shifted. I kicked it off and got to my knees.

Okay. So far so good. I crawled on the floor to the windows.

The entire north wall of our living room is windows, looking out to the other apartment building across from us. Greg said it looked like money. I said I didn't want people staring at my junk. Greg's inevitable response to this was the assurance no one wanted to stare at my junk. Touché, Greg.

The thin, blue blinds were the only barrier between the world and my obvious inebriation. I crawled over to them now, stumbling over the cold, bare floor.

I reached the little blind-control stick at the end of the last window, and spun it. The blinds slanted open, and revealed the apartment complex. A small, orange sun was rising in the east, and it cast pumpkin-coloured light on the manicured lawns and asphalt byways below.

The light was too much. I closed the blinds.

I coughed again, and gagged on my own breath. I thought of how I must look: a sweat-stained, unclean, alcohol-ghost. Wrinkled clothes, messed hair, breath smelling like rancid sick. Slats of light striping my hands and back. Clinging to the floor. Baffled by gravity. Disgusting.

It was the earring's fault.

The earring.

I'd dropped it at the foot of the sofa leg. It was still there, half-hidden under a drift of green blanket.

I stumbled on all fours away from the windows. The curved gold caught the faint light in the room and concentrated it to a point—a single, unblinking eye.

The earring ruined everything. I could ignore my eyes—still blue, still glow-in-the-dark—by avoiding mirrors. Hell, I could pretend I always had blue eyes. But the earring was something incontrovertibly real.

I tripped. My knees skidded on the floor. I sprawled forward on the ground, right in front of the earring. Not so small anymore: it towered, a wall of inscrutable gold with its single point of light, watching me.

I hated it. Especially because hating the earring was easier than the vague sense at the back of my head that, somehow, I had landed in something terrifying, and then fucked it up.

I grabbed it. I squeezed it in my palm and felt the edge dig into my skin.

"Fucking thing." I grumbled. My eyes shut and this time I thought sleep would come. I thought I'd fall asleep, and wake up safe and warm and normal. But no sleep came.

"Fucking thing." I whispered. Then I groaned, and tossed the thing away.

I really needed a shower.

#

It was such a stupid thing.

I slouched against the shower wall, pinching the earring in my thumb and index, observing it for any imperfections or hidden letters that would only appear in warm soapy water. I found none.

It was just a goldish circle, broken only by a tiny lever to separate it. I knew three different places where I could get better-looking jewelry than this.

But last night, Amrith said this earring could find the thing that had changed my eyes.

The water drummed my head. The hot water had sweated out most of the remaining alcohol, and cleaned off whatever gunk had been oiling my skin. But my mind still felt full of fog, and though I was still too nervous to sleep, actual thinking came hard.

I tried a few mental exercises. I failed them. I couldn't recall any speeches from Faust, nor could I remember any squared number series. That meant I currently had the working IQ of a rabbit; today I'd be useless for anything that didn't involve the internet.

The internet it was then.

I got out of the shower and toweled off. I wasn't in any shape to work, so I grabbed the phone and called my supervisor while I searched for undies in the clothes-dunes of my bedroom.

My supervisor, Tanya, was mad. She didn't say it, because we were a calm and considerate workplace, but I knew that my absence today would add another entry on the "improvements" section. Whatever—I wasn't trying to climb the corporate ladder. I just wanted to pay my rent.

After I finished with Tanya and found a cleanish outfit, I remembered my laptop was missing—stolen from last night.

So to balance karma, I stole Greg's laptop. He kept it under his bed, in the dark blue box it came in from Best Buy. I dragged it out, set it down on our kitchen table, and booted it as I turned the power on for our ancient, black plastic coffee machine.

While the machine gurgled to life, I guessed the password by running down a list of Greg's favorite things. I went through "Carrie," "watermelon," "Daft Punk" and "P90X" until correctly guessing "123456".

As I typed, the red light on the coffee machine's rear flickered on to let me know it was heated up. I ignored it, went to Google and typed in "level zero."  
The results were a movie trailer and a Swedish electo-rock band.

I idly looked for a mug in the cupboard and pulled out one with a rooster on it because I liked roosters. I set the mug under the coffee maker and pushed the button for a large cup.

The machine made noises like a thousand cats in a grain thresher. I went back to the computer.

I tried Google again with "blue glowing eyes." Horror movie links and unscary pictures came up. Web MD had nothing with blue eyes as a symptom.

A thin column of coffee poured from the machine's spout into my mug, spilling fresh-roast smell into the air. I set the mug down next to the laptop.

I stared at the Google logo some more.

Slowly, I typed in "stalker man."

Just a bunch of articles on stalkers.

I thought a bit more.

"Stalker man glowing eyes."

Two results came up. They were all from the same site: something called Creepy Pasta Wiki. Each of the Google items came from a conversation about one article, called "The Slender Man."

I clicked it.

Creepy Pasta Wiki was a standard Wikipedia-model. The site seemed to be dedicated to internet horror stories. The site had a blood-red background, and a lot of... interesting images. I saw a German Sheppard, grinning at me with a healthy set of human teeth.

The article I'd clicked was about something called The Slender Man—a fictional monster reportedly created as part of a contest on the Somethingawful forums. The Slender Man appeared as a freakishly tall man in a black suit and tie.

There were pictures: black and white images of children playing in playgrounds and parks where, in the background, a tall silhouette stood and watched. According to the article, The Slender Man hunted children.

I clicked the article history, and found the reference to the stalker man.

5 months ago (Nov 06)  
MrSparkle (contributor)  
Edits: added alternate names for slender man: man in black, stalker man, the rake

5 months ago (Nov 08)  
JerJer (Admin)  
Edits: deleted alternate names: men in black is for alien stories and stalker man are from the labyrinth mythos. just because they're similar doesn't mean it's an alias. stalker men have glowing eyes, no suits. And the rake is dog-like.

And that was it.

I googled just "stalker men" again. I scrolled through about twenty pages about relationships and psychos.

My coffee was lukewarm now. I chugged half the mug and spilled the rest in the sink.

I went back to the Creepy Pasta discussion.

I googled "labyrinth mythos stalker men."

The first result was a TVTropes article called The Adjectival Man

I knew about TV Tropes; another wiki-style website, it was dedicated to documenting recurring themes and tropes in movies and literature. It had taught me more about fiction than four years studying English at UTM.

This article described the naming formula "the+adjective+man" to come up with a generic scary name.

I scanned down the article to a list of works that used it.

Pan's Labyrinth's Pale Man uses this trope.

The Slender Man Mythos, featuring the Slender Man!

The Stalker Men from the Labyrinth stories. _  
_

I went into a Google freefall for another hour.

I bit my lip. I made another cup of coffee and drank it while I checked my email. There was one from Tanya and one from Rohit. I didn't open either of them.

It was eight o'clock now. My eyes felt sore and my brain was flickering on and off.  
I created an account on the Creepy Pasta Wiki, found the forums, and started a topic.

Flautist

I'm looking for information on the labyrinth mythos and stalker men. Anyone have any links?

I hit the enter key and looked at the floor. The off-white tiles looked sort of comfortable.

#

" _He's moving."_

" _We still have time. Block the gate."_

I woke up, cold and stiff. My neck hurt. I saw nothing but white blurs.

The blurs became kitchen appliances. Had they finally rebelled from their human masters? What did they want from me?

Then I remembered I'd fallen asleep on the kitchen tiles.

Then again, that's what the appliances would want me to believe.

I rolled over. My nose left a shiny, oily blot on the tiles.

Afternoon light pierced through the blinds and filled the room. The little clock on the stove read 3:04. I blinked from the light, and tasted stale coffee on my tongue.

But my mind was clearer now. I remembered that the square root of 164 was 14, and that Christopher Marlowe wrote the Tragical Historie of Doctor Faustus around 1592.

I planted both hands on the shiny white tiles and pushed up. My balance was back. I shook my head around a bit. My headache was gone.

Greg's computer sat where I'd left it on the kitchen table. The screen was black, covered with a thin skein of dust. I'd clean it carefully before I put it away; Greg got weird about his computer.

I patted my shoulders and found a hard, painful ball of muscle between my shoulder and neck. I massaged the knot with my good hand, sat down at the table, and went back online.

The message I'd left in the Creepypasta forum had gotten some comments.

Yorik: Yeah good luck with that

Anon101: the labyrinth mythos is closed. it had a little buzz about a year ago but all the links and stories vanished.

Mr. Sparkle: I heard that it was a viral campaign for a website or a shoe or something. most of the posts and stories have been deleted (legal trouble or something). but the original is still lurking around. i copypastad it on my hard disk. i'll pm you.

I checked the Wiki's message system, there was indeed a message from Mr. Sparkle.

There were no greetings, no personal comments, just a wall of text.

I scanned the text. I saw the words "stalker man," I saw "glowing eyes."

This might be it. This might teach me exactly what the fuck was happening.

So I started at the top, carefully reading every word. But as I read, my chest grew cold. My stomach tightened. My breath ran cold and shallow.

This story was obviously written by a moron.  
I write of THE LABYRINTH not to encourage the foolish to conduct this ritual. I write this not to make fame or fortune for myself. I write this as a warning: because the labyrinth is real. And if you discover it, you'd better know what to do instead of running in blind.

So pay attention.

In a city, you will find a small cave. Maybe it'll be inside the earth, maybe it'll be on the edge of a cliff, and maybe it'll be on the rocks by a lake. You'll know this is the cave because, even though it'll be shallow and small, once you step into it the sky will darken outside, even at the hight of noon.

There will be a stone in the cave. It will be standing upright, and will look completely normal.

Now, don't stare at the stone. If you do, you'll be calling the labyrinth open.  
If you do stare at the stone, you'll start to feel odd. The air will turn warm and toasty, and the colors in the room will go haywire. Your vision will blur and your eyes will feel weird, like when you're staring at an optical illusion.

If you break eye contact with the stone, everything will go back to normal.

But if you stare into the stone long enough, it'll turn black.

The stone has become an entrance to the labyrinth now. If you don't break eye contact with the stone, and if you move slowly into it, you will enter the labyrinth. But if you do, you will be unable to get out unless you have someone on the other end to help you.

If you see two blue lights in the stone, you should run. That means a stalker man has found you.

The stalker man can't hurt you as long as you don't step into the stone. If you do however, you'll be in danger. Your eyes will turn bright blue, and then...  
It'll be too late.

There was a note from MrSparkle at the bottom of the message.  
—yeah I know it's sort of sucky compared to the really good pastas out there. the spinoffs were great though. too bad no one can find them now. anyway hope this helps. look into the Theta-Pi series if you like the idea of this one, or this book called Arena, it's sorta a similar concept.

I took a deep breath. I calmly and quickly wrote a reply to MrSparkle thanking him for the story. I assured him it had been helpful.

I shut off the laptop, unplugged it, and looped the power cord around my elbow. I closed the laptop and put it and the cord back in the box under Greg's bed.

Then, I slowly entered my room, locked the door, and screamed at the wall for a few minutes.

The story was real.

The writing was crap but it was real. The glowing eyes, the air, the darkened sky, I'd seen all of those.

But that story made the whole thing sound like fucking Bloody Mary.

My throat got sore so I stopped screaming. Screaming was useless anyway. I wasn't some horror-movie chick. I collapsed onto a pile of clothes next to the bed.

The door to my closet has a mirror on it. I looked sideways at it. My eyes were still blue.

Fuck it.

I got up and slid the closet door open. Unlike the rest of my room, the inside was bare of junk. The entire thing was empty, except for a blue toolbox at the bottom.

The toolbox was a heavy, Craftsman model, built like a small tank. It was the same kind my dad owned back home. He bought me the toolbox when I moved out, and presented it to me as a gift of one man to another. It was a thoughtful gesture from a person I loved, but Dad forgot I didn't even know how to use a screwdriver.

That was why I'd stuck a label on the box with the heading "emergency journalism equipment."

I thumbed the latches off and opened up the box. A set of compartments fanned open with oiled, mechanical silence. I lifted the compartments out. Most of them held bolts, screws, and tools. But at the very bottom...

I lifted out six containers of small, rattly stuff, and two trays of screwdrivers, wrenches and ratchets. When the last tray was lifted out, it revealed the bottom of the box: all the tools of my trade as a blogger.

Okay, most of it was crap: fake moustaches, hair dye, a broken voice-recorder for interviews. But there was something I could use: an ancient, silver Motorolla flip phone.

The phone was banged up, the plastic scuffed grey. The SD card was gone. But when I powered it on, the battery was full—and there was a camera in it.

I also found four TTC tokens, a roll of quarters, a flashlight, and a red spiral notebook with half the pages ripped out. I grabbed a blue hoodie draped across my desk and tucked all the equipment in various pouches.

Last of all, I tore a scrap of paper from my notebook and scratched out a note.

Greg—off to find monsters. Not back by midnight call 911. For serious.

— _Sam_

I left the note on the kitchen table.

Outside, the afternoon waned. By the time I reached my destination, it'd be near dusk.

That didn't bother me; I wasn't afraid of night.

Just stars that ran in perfect lines.  

#

" _It's getting worse. We can't save him."_

The sun set on Lake Ontario. Wind blew through my hair and ruffled the sleeves of my dark red hoodie. I held my phone up to the sky, and the departing clouds. I clicked the camera.

No stars.

I snapped the phone shut. I wanted to toss it. I wanted to give up and go home. Instead, I looked around the park to see if I'd missed something.

The park was one of those small, no-name ones. It stretched about half a kilometer—starting at some tennis cages and going up to a parking lot north of here. On one side of the park, traffic surged over the aging, high-flying Gardiner. On the other, dirty water quietly lapped at dirty sand.

The park was mostly just flat turf, with brown grass turning green. There were picnic-benches on one side, gouged with names and swear-words, and a swingset with two of the four swings falling off their rusted chains.

It was aggravating.

I stood in thought. The wind blew harder. The swings creaked in their rusty chains. On the shore, a flock of seagulls screeched. Their white wings flapped. Yellow stick-legs stepped out a quick, complicated dance for food.

It was so aggravating.

I pocketed the phone in my hoodie, and my fingers hit the earring I brought with me. I rubbed the metal absently. My legs ached and I'd gone too long without Advil for my hand.

I'd do one more kilometre.

Along the shore, a man in bright red running shorts sprinted down the waves. His feet made wet slaps on the sand.

My hunch for searching the lakeshore had come from the labyrinth story. The story mentioned cliffs, underground, and caves near lakes. Not counting the subway system, the GTA only had the shore of a lake.

But for eight kilometres, I'd walked along the shore. At every kilometre, I raised my phone to the sky. I never saw stars.

I walked north, keeping a distance from the lake. The seagulls followed me a few meters away.

I couldn't search the entire lakeshore, I realized. Not in a human lifetime at least. I had to go back to work tomorrow.

I smirked.

My eyes had changed colour with no explanation. And I had to go to work tomorrow.

I laughed. There was a little too much crazy in it; the seagulls shrieked. They pumped their wings and coasted the wind back to the swing sets.

I'd landed in some sort of interdimensional conspiracy involving monsters and computer geeks. _And I had to go to work tomorrow._

"Oh boy!" I cackled. "Oh man!"

Maybe the monsters would wait for me. Maybe I could negotiate a weekend-only plan with them. Maybe I could get a doctor's note exempting me from supernatural activities. It worked for swim class in junior high.

I wiped my eyes and kept walking. As I walked, I checked the phone.

Every time I'd hold it up, squint in the light of the setting sun, and hold the camera button until it made the chick-chock shutter sound.

Every time the photo showed a normal, pixelated sky.

Maybe using two-year old internet legends as a guide wasn't the practical idea I needed.

I snapped the pictures anyway.

I passed the parking lot marking the end of the no-name park. I continued on unowned, untamed lakefront. Near the end of the kilometre, I found a ream of rocks.

The rocks included all sizes from thumb-sized pebbles to boulders bigger than my oven. They cut across my path, rising to about the height of my waist.

They came from a small cliff about thirty meters up. The cliff was artificial, probably raised to accommodate the small street passing across it.

It looked like the city had tried to keep the cliff stable by putting up some concrete barriers and wrapping black mesh around it to prevent erosion. But the mesh had torn. I saw frayed black strands where the flow of rocks began. From there, the stones spilled across my path, and into the lake.

" _He's not coming around."_

Something silver glinted at the head of the rocks.

I squinted. The object was square, but it didn't look like paper or a poster. It looked solid.

I took a few steps forward.

" _Give him another."_

I planted a foot on the rocks and pushed myself onto them. They shifted beneath my weight. My legs shook as I rose.

I took another good look at the square thing.

It looked a lot like a laptop.

My laptop.

I wobbled closer and closer. The stones creaked.

I couldn't believe it.

I looked at the sky. It seemed normal. I held up my phone and took a picture—still normal sky.

I took a few steps further. It was definitely my laptop. I saw the crappy Type R sticker I'd pasted to the front—joking that it made the computer go faster.

Strange.

Almost like a trap.

I shook my head.

" _It's coming. We have to go. Now."_

It was a beautiful thing. A divine coincidence.

I wandered over the rocks. I don't know why but I was grinning. I took a big breath of fresh spring air. The pain bled out my legs. Even my hand felt fine.

" _We're not leaving."_

I chuckled a bit. I felt good. I turned around and gave a long, sweeping gaze at the world that seemed so beautiful.

" _He's right. We have to go."_

But why was the sky like that?

" _Try again."_

The sky was black. Completely black.

Except...

I looked up.

No moon, no stars, but there were two glowing lights, glimmering like candle flames.

They were bright blue.

" _Fine. Here goes."_

#

I screamed. My throat stretched, strained, tore.

"Hit it again." Lena said.

Laurent smashed an aluminum baseball bat on the cold, concrete floor. Blue sparks flew up. They fell, fizzling on dark asphalt.

The floor shook beneath me. A cry like tortured whale-song sang from the stone ceiling.

Pain. Pain like my bones would burst. Pain like drilled teeth. Pain like injections, muscles swelling tissues bloating gonna die gonna tear gonna burst.

"Get the knife," she said. Her hands pinned my chest.

Couldn't take it.

"No!" Josh shouted. Thunder rolled over his voice. "Separation will kill him."

My back arched. Eyes prickled, went warm. Saw red in the long fluorescent lights. Fuck fuck fuck.

"Get the knife!" Lena screamed.

"Shut up!" Amrith shouted. The noise of thunder, rolling metal, screaming stone, reached a crescendo.

The thunder subsided. The pain yanked itself out my body. I gasped. Coughed out vomit.

Silence.

"It's already here," he whispered.

#

The lights flickered. My consciousness blurred.

An empty parking garage, a cold one.

"He's coming to." Laurent said. He sported a bright yellow sack hat on his head. Did he really think that looked cool?

"Josh, get a gate ready," Lena said.

"Already working on it," Josh said from the wall.

"What's going on?" I asked. It came out as a muffled whimper. I shifted. My clothes hung heavy with sweat.

"You okay?" Lena asked.

"I'm fine," I tried to say. Except what came out was just a wail. Spit gurgled in my throat. I coughed.

Pain. Still so much pain echoing in my limbs. And so much cold.

"Can you move?" Amrith asked.

My fingers curled like a dead man's. I hadn't told them to. My breath sped up and spots burst in my eyes. Heartbeat rose. My jugular throbbed against my neck. I tasted blood.

Lena said. "He's going back under."

#

I picked up my laptop. The sun-toasted plastic warmed my palms.

I chuckled, sat down on the rocks, and watched the waves on the shore of Lake Ontario.

The sun glowed a deep orange over the water. It reminded me of orange juice. Warm orange juice.

I leaned back. The rocks felt warm beneath me, and strangely comfortable. Stray bits of stone clung to my shirt.

" _We have to leave him."_

Did warm orange juice taste good? Probably not. Mango juice then.

" _We can't."_

Yes, mango juice was tasty, I decided.

" _Hit it again."_

#

I saw white, just white.

White turned grey. Grey turned to dingy parking garage.

"Finally." Lena breathed. She stood up and kicked the floor with a brown leather boot. "Keep him up this time."

I coughed. My mouth felt full of sour-tasting fluff.

"Okay, we've got him." Amrith said. He looked over his shoulder to Josh. "How's the gate?"

"Let. Me. Work," Josh seethed from the wall. He held an earring—Lena's earring—in one hand. The other hand pushed against a salt-stained concrete wall. Beside him, Laurent crouched with an aluminum baseball bat, held up like he was ready to hit a home run.

Here again? I didn't want to be here.

"Crap." Amrith looked down at me. He started going fuzzy. "NonoNO!"

#

The wipers squeaked on the glass. The tires stuttered as it traversed the drifts of snow.  
The entire car shuddered as we hit a bump in the asphalt. We'd just entered the narrow bridge on Hurontario. The snow quietly intensified.

The bridge was long, utilitarian concrete. One of about four on this street that spanned the Credit River. The river ran south from Orangeville and emptied in Lake Ontario. Approaching this part of Mississauga, the river broke up into three, later converging back into a single stream. Over the centuries, the river had carved deep valleys where it ran. It was pretty, but damn inconvenient.

In the daylight, I could have seen the trees waving beneath the bridge. I could have seen the river, and the deer that sometimes crossed it. But tonight was dark: the concrete railings showed darkness, and snow. Nothing else.

"It wasn't your fault," Jon said.

Jonathan looked... normal. But then, what did I expect? Of course he looked normal, like Dad, except with lighter hair and four scars on his ear from his rebel teen earring phase.

For some reason, I couldn't see his eyes; the shadows cut them off.

I stared too long. Jon noticed. He waggled his ears and crossed his eyes at me until I looked away. I felt better though. It was just the lighting after all: as soon as he'd lowered his head to mock me, I saw his face just fine.

"It feels like my fault," I muttered. I looked down for my laptop, but it wasn't there.

I didn't own a laptop.

Jon scratched his chin. His stubble scritch-scritched against his thumb.

The passing streetlights drew closer and closer together as we entered Brampton. Neon signs flashed in the windows—a Jack Astor's, a Boston Pizza, a bright green Chili Pepper for Thai Excite.

"Whew," Jon said. "I thought we'd never get home." His breath fogged as he spoke. Mine did too.

But the heater was on, full blast.

We passed through the downtown and swung into the suburbs. It got darker again: no cars out this late, and in this weather.

"You don't have to be afraid." Jon said.

I nodded, even though I didn't understand him.

Jon entered our neighborhood. He turned down Squire street and took a left on Jackdaw.

I rarely saw our block covered in this much snow; it caked everything, leaving only slivers of black beneath the eaves of houses and the boughs of trees.

Our house appeared at the end of Orion Street—a white-brick bungalow with Spanish arches. A tasteless plastic angel stood next to the maple tree on our lawn. The angel, an Easter bunny, and a Frankenstein's monster all shared the same spot in a choreographed holiday timeshare.

Jonathan pulled into the narrow driveway and stopped only when the car almost touched the garage door.

Jon turned off the car. The headlights died. The dashboard died. The quiet sounds of the engine and the motor died.

"Come on," Jon said. His breath steamed around him. "Let's get inside."

I hugged my backpack to my chest.

The house looked odd; the lights were out inside. Something else was off: the exhaust from the furnace should have been steaming in this cold. It wasn't right. The house didn't just look empty. It looked dead.

Where Mom and Dad at a party? That might explain it. But then why did Jonathan have the only car?

Jon undid his seatbelt, kicked his door open, and got out. He bent back in to look at me.

"Coming?" He asked.

His eyes glowed bright blue.

Jon frowned. "Something wrong bud?"

" _Last time or we leave. Okay?"_

"Jon?" I asked. "... Didn't you die?"

" _Hit it!"_

#

I gasped. My eyes flew open. Cold stone beneath my hands.

I saw Lena and Amrith sitting above me. Lena slapped me.

"Ow," I shouted, more from shock than anything.

"Don't do that again," Lena said. She massaged the back of her hand and looked over to Amrith. She nodded. Amrith nodded back. He slapped me again.

"Ow!" I clutched my jaw. That one did hurt.

"You nearly died." Amrith said. "A couple of times. You can't go back to sleep."

"I wasn't sleeping," I muttered into my hand.

"Come on, we're still in trouble," Lena said. She and Amrith grabbed my arms and pulled me to my feet. I tripped. They steadied me.

"We have to go!" Josh shouted. Next to him, a blue line glowed on the wall.

The room tilted left. My feet slipped. Amrith and Lena held me up.

"What's wrong with this room?" I mumbled. A thousand tiny pains screamed at me from the small corners of my body. The junctures in my spine, the hollow of my back. I tasted vomit on my mouth.

Amrith and Lena pulled me down. I resisted. A sound like splitting rocks crashed from the ceiling. The ground snapped beneath me and I flew a foot into the air. I collided with the ground and they pulled me back to my feet.

"You've got to trust us!" Amrith shouted.

What's going on?" I groaned.

"You don't want to know," Amrith shouted in my ear. He whipped around. "Josh?!"

"Done!" Josh said. A blue line of light stood in the wall in front of him. He stuffed something in the pocket of his hoody. "Come on!"

And then we were running. Lena and Amrith charged me at the line. It was glowing, brighter and brighter and...

CHAPTER SIX: ESCAPE

Dark, like cave mouths and bad dreams.

Warm, like a dead campfire.

The air smelled burnt, and greasy.

I groaned. A feeling of revulsion gurgled up from my stomach and made me shudder.

I felt Amrith's and Lena's hands on my shoulders and waist, but could not see them in the sudden darkness. I swatted them away. My balance lurched. My knees knocked together. I groped for something to hold on to.

I couldn't hear—just murmurs beneath the squeal of tinnitus. I caught my breath, steadied myself, and let the lingering disgust pass through me. I swallowed. My ears popped, and I could hear again.

"—Isn't going to—"

"Shut up."

"You shut up."

A flashlight clicked on and the voices stopped.

A circle of light wavered on a black floor. It shot up to a blue line glowing on a close, black wall.

Laurent passed through the beam, dragging his aluminum bat. He set up beside the blue line. He hitched the bat up to his shoulders, grabbed it both hands, and curled his fingers around the handle wrapped in fraying black tape.

He swung.

The bat smashed the wall with a home run _tink_. Blue sparks flew out from the line.

The blue line shuttered, stuttered, and blacked out. Another layer of darkness fell on top of the room. It was just the flashlight now.

I felt a hand grab my shoulder. I could tell it was Lena's.

"Don't relax," her voice sounded off. Without visual markers, it seemed to come from far away. "Don't fall asleep. If you feel strange tell us."

"Also just so we're clear we might perhaps have to kill you," Amrith's disembodied voice said. I think he was joking.

"Jesus Amrith." Josh whispered. The joke got a lot less funny. From the sound, I could tell he held the flashlight.

A hiss filled the room. Red sparks and thick, viscous smoke flew up and cast the room in blood-tones. A road flare.

Laurent held the flare in his other hand. His eyes creased and he looked away from it. His mouth puckered like he'd eaten something spicy. He tossed the flare into the corner. Our shadows reeled around it.

I could see everyone now, standing in the bloody light. We stood in a room, about ten metres by ten. The walls, floor, and ceiling were black plastic, and each wall—aside from the one where the blue light had stood—had a doorway carved into it. I had a feeling that these doorways led to similar, identical rooms.

Back in the dungeon. Back in Level Zero.

I whimpered. I tried to rein it in, but failed.

Josh dropped to his knees, digging in his pockets.

It could have been a dream. It really could have. But here I was again...

"One sec," Josh grunted. He put the flashlight down. Light rolled across the floor. His hands patted his back pockets, his front, and finally reached into his hoodie and pulled out a pocket knife.

The others stood calmly as if this was all normal. Josh pried the blade open with his thumb and forefinger, steadied the knife blade down, and scraped it along the floor.

The blade left blue light shining behind it, like black-lite paint.

I patted my pockets.

"Where's my phone?" I slurred. "I had a phone."

Josh drew away from the glowing mark. Laurent ambled up, raised the bat, and brought it down.

The blue light flickered out.

Josh scraped the knife against the floor again. Again, a line of light welled up where he'd cut. The light sharpened the lines of his face. When the subtle blue combined with the dull glow of the flare, his eyes turned into black pools.

Josh backed off. Laurent hit the glowing mark again. Sparks flew, and sizzled out. The two looked like blacksmiths forging metal.

"What're they doing?" I asked, pointing dumbly at them "Where's my cell phone?"

"It's just a bug," Amrith said. He looked away from Josh and Laurent as they scraped and smashed the floor. "Level Zero has them just like the real world. This is a simple one."

Josh and Laurent did their thing five more times. The fifth time Laurent's bat struck the glowing brand, it didn't go out. Josh took out his knife, held it over the mark, and stabbed it down. The mark blipped, and vanished. Just plain floor again now.

Somehow, the interplay of light made me a bit sick. And I had an uneasy feeling if I looked where Josh had made the marks, I wouldn't even see a scratch on the floor.

"Now all the gates will shine brighter," Amrith whispered. "We need to find gates because we just destroyed the old one."

"What's a gate?" I asked. "I had a cell phone, a Moto."

Josh grabbed his flashlight and spun it up. "Where'd I put the pack?" He muttered to himself. He threw the light around until it hit a backpack tucked into the corner of the room. The backpack was a black Swiss Gear, with a tiny red Swiss Cross glinting on the front.

Laurent grabbed the bag by the straps, and unzipped the top. He turned it over and shook the contents out onto the floor. Everyone bent down to pick the stuff up. It looked like more road flares and some flashlights.

"Where'd my cell phone go?" I asked. "And my laptop?"

"You didn't come with any of that stuff." Josh muttered. Something clicked in his hands. Another flashlight lit up in his hands. He brought both under his face and showed a darkened smile. "Welcome to Level Zero."

Josh spun the flashlight around and handed it to me.

"I had a cell phone," I muttered as I took the flashlight. It felt heavy, with a thick rubber casing that absorbed the sweat on my palms. I backed up and felt the wall on my back. "I had my journalism equipment. My cell phone."

"You left your apartment at one o'clock," Lena said, looking down as she got her own flashlight working. It flicked on, and she turned the beam to the floor.

"You didn't even have shoes on." She continued. " You walked about ten-k down to the parking garage of the Etobicoke library. Then you waited there while a Stalker Man opened a gate."

Why was Lena lying?

"I went to the beach." I said. Flashlights lit up in Laurent and Amrith's hands.

"You opened a gate and nearly got us all killed," Laurent said.

"Look at your feet," Amrith whispered.

I swung my flashlight down.

My shoes were gone. On my feet, I wore only white gym socks. Dirt and dust had discolored the soles. Dark red and yellow flakes caked the line of my left foot. Blood and blisters.

But...

"I went. To. The. Beach." I nearly wailed.

"Stay calm," Josh said.

I was calm. I was so fucking calm right now I nearly screamed it at him. I backed against the wall, shaking.

"Hey? Hey!" Laurent shouted. I didn't look up at him. He grabbed my chin and pointed me at his face.

"We'll talk about this later," Laurent said. "For now we've got to get out of here."

I swallowed, screwed my eyes shut, and nodded. Getting out of here sounded like a very good idea.

Laurent let go of my face.

"We'll go one hundred rooms out, then meet back here," Lena said. Everyone nodded. "Laurent stays here with this guy."

"Name's Sam," I mumbled.

"Stays here with Sam," Lena corrected.

"I'll bring you up to speed," Laurent sighed.

Lena, Amrith and Josh each headed through a different doorway. Their footsteps quickly faded out.

My feet hurt.

I crouched, stumbled, and sat down against the wall. I clicked off my flashlight and buried my face in my good hand.

Laurent sighed. He paced around a bit until placing his flashlight so it stood up on the ground. Then he sat down as well. He folded the bat across his knees like a samurai with his sword.

"We've been looking for you since last night," Laurent said.

"I'm sorry I punched Josh," I said.

Laurent shrugged. "He was a dick."

"He feels bad though." Laurent continued, looking around the room with a casual vigilance. "So do I. If we'd checked the seal then the Stalker Man couldn't have set that trap for you."

More crazy lingo for more crazy things. I rubbed my forehead.

"I think we're even now," Laurent said.

The road flare in the corner made little gasping noises. The red light flickered, leaped, and finally fizzled out to a glowing red dot. Soon, it was just an afterimage.

We sat in the dark. Laurent's flashlight gave the only light. Black walls on black shadows—it confused my eyes, made the walls do funny things. It almost looked like they were breathing.

"What happened?" I whispered.

"A Stalker Man marked you," Laurent said.

He shifted his position. His bat lost balance on his knees, and dipped toward the ground.

Laurent snatched the bat. His hands flew so fast you'd think the thing was made of dynamite. Carefully, he settled it back on his knees and continued. "And now he wants to finish the job. He can control you to an extent, but we have ways of countering that control."

"What is a Stalker Man?" I asked.

Laurent told me.

The Stalker Men were a manifestation of Level Zero.

Like Level Zero, they were junk data: random bits of physical laws that formed a rudimentary consciousness by intersecting at just the right place.

The Stalker Men were different from anything on Earth. No cells, no thought, no emotion we could grasp. They experienced reality on a different level. Creatures of information, they had no discernible language, no writing, and no contact with anything except themselves and the insides of Level Zero.

They were, fundamentally, alien.

They could alter Level Zero: turn the temperature down, stretch the walls to vistas exceeding the known universe, bend space, or delete it quietly out of existence. They were all-powerful inside this world.

No one knew what powers they held in the real world. As long as they had access to an unsealed gate, they could technically do anything. But usually, they did not enter the real world, they didn't bother humans. Probably didn't even know we existed.

But sometimes...

Sometimes, the Stalker Men marked people. No one knew why, but the people who did get marked always behaved the same way. The Stalker Men lured them into Level Zero for short spells, and their human victims slowly suffered the inevitable symptoms: delusions, altered consciousness, and eventually, complete disappearance inside the black, lightless halls of Level Zero.

Most people didn't reappear after a Stalker Man had marked them.

"But," Laurent assured me. "We aren't most people. We can fight them."

"With baseball bats?" I muttered. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and shivered. My stomach panged. I'd probably get diarrhea tonight—standard response to stress.

"We know how to use bugs." Laurent said, oblivious to my intestinal distress. "And we discover more all the time. The Stalker Men can't learn—we don't think. So that gives us an advantage."

"Bugs?" I asked.

"They're like these glitches in physics—in the rules," Laurent said. "We'll have to show you later. See, when we discovered Level Zero we also discovered that we could—"

"Walk on air?" I interrupted.

I heard a grin in Laurent's answer. "We can do a bunch of stuff. Like, superpower shit. It's thanks to this one guy, Haze. He knows everything."

I half-listened. I put a hand down on the floor and tried to lie down. But it felt too uncomfortable—the floor was too warm, like a toilet seat just after someone leaves it. So I got back up and played with my flashlight, clicking it on and off.

"You'll probably meet Haze one day," Laurent trailed off. He rapped his fingers on the walls.

I didn't think Laurent was lying—at least, I didn't think he was knowingly lying. But even after seeing him suspended in the air, I still didn't want to believe he could do superhuman shit. It wasn't my concern anyway. I didn't want to be Superman. I wanted to blog. That was it.

"So, you believe Leafs and Sens last week?" Laurent asked.

"I can't watch Leafs hockey anymore," I said. "It pains me."

Laurent clucked his tongue at me.

We sat in the dark. Sometimes, far off, I heard a sound like groaning metal. Sometimes—closer—I heard a sound like creaking wood. Laurent wasn't bothered, so I didn't worry either.

"Aren't they taking long?" I asked.

"Dunno," Laurent said. He reached for his flashlight and flashed it onto his wrist. The light shone off an expensive leather watch.

"Dunno." He sighed.

"I saw things," I said. "Back there. It was like a dream."

Laurent was silent. He flipped the flashlight beam up again, and placed it back on the ground. The light stood a little farther from him now, so I could only see the edge of his knee.

Then he spoke. "Haze thinks they can read your mind. They try to lull it into a false sense of security so you'll go along with them. What did you see?"

I ignored the question.

I put my palm on the warm floor. I couldn't feel anything—no rush of underground water, no vibrations of passing traffic. As far as I knew, there was nothing beneath this ground.

And Josh's knife hadn't left any marks on the ground. I was sure of that. So sure I didn't even bother checking. This place was immune to us.

But then what lay beneath the ground here? And how high did the ceiling go until breaching a surface? Was there even an up or down here?

When you got right down to it—what _was_ this place?

"The thing is though," Laurent began," Stalker Men don't get human emotions, so they'll put weird combinations in. Like, a vagina with lasagna in it. That's a good way to tell a Stalker Man is messing with you."

"The stuff I saw was stuff I wanted." I said. No emotion in what I said.

"It's probably a smart one then," Laurent commented. "Shit luck."

I groaned.

"They've been gone a long time," Laurent said to himself. His fingers drummed the bat, making a hollow, silvery thrumming.

_Hhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa_.

A distant roar like clashing glaciers howled through the endless halls.

"What the hell?" I grabbed my flashlight and turned it on and winced; the light stung my eyes. I stumbled to my feet.

"Relax," Laurent said. I swung the beam at him. It spilled over his face and retarded yellow sack-hat. He hissed. "Ah man what the fuck?"

"Just checking that you're not a Stalker Man," I said. The light in my hands shook. My stomach cramped.

"Hey we're safe." Laurent's eyes screwed up and I lowered the light.

I didn't believe him. I paced across the room, holding the flashlight to the ground like cops hold guns in movies.

"We broke the gate in time to seal if off." Lauren said. "It'll take ages for it to get back into Level Zero, and unless it has a gate to anchor itself to, it's powerless."

Laurent mumbled something.

"What?" I asked.

Laurent's clothes rustled and he stood up.

"Nothing," Laurent said.

Clink-clink-clink.

"And that? What's that?" I asked. I backed into the wall.

"What's what?" Laurent asked.

"That sound." I said. I reached across the wall. My fingers found the beginning of a doorway—a sharp angle cut into the wall.

"It's nothing," Laurent replied.

I edged over to the doorway, and peered into the next room.

Darkness. Even with Laurent's flashlight behind me, I couldn't see. I raised my own light into the doorway. The beam disappeared with the dark.

I shivered. Light traveled about 300 000 kilometers per second. If I couldn't see it reflected back, then Level Zero stretched very, very far.

_Clink-clink-clink_. A sound like homemade wind chimes rang down the rooms.

"How do you not hear that?" I asked.

"I hear it but I told you it's nothing," Laurent grunted. He was still standing. I could tell by where his voice came from. "Put the light off. The others will be back soon."

I lowered the light but kept it on. I tossed it around the room, checking the doorways. I strained to remember who went down the door beside me. Amrith, Lena, or Josh? Why couldn't I see them? A hundred rooms wasn't that much, was it?

"Please turn if off," Laurent said.

_Clink-clink-clink_.

"I don't see anyone down here," I said.

"Don't worry about it, just turn the light off." Laurent said. I pointed the flashlight to him and he shielded his eyes.

Laurent was holding his bat across his shoulder.

"Why do you have that?" I asked.

"Protection," Laurent said. He spun the bat and held it down so the head hovered just above the floor. "I call it the circuit breaker. Although really it does nothing like that."

"Huh." I said.

The air grew thicker. The room seemed smaller now; I was noticing how the ceilings cut too low, and how the walls seemed to press in, not like a mindless thing, but like a creature trying to test its boundaries.

Laurent felt too close as well.

I widened my feet. My centre of gravity settled. I tested the weight of the flashlight in my hand and the shaft of light jiggled.

"Please turn off the light," Laurent said.

_Clink-clink-clink_.

"I'd rather not." I replied.

_Tap-tap-tap-tap_.

"Guys!" Lena's voice came muffled down the hall. "Guys!"

Laurent's head perked.

My hand tightened around the flashlight.

_Tap-tap-tap-tap_ the sound of tapping feet came louder and louder. I pressed myself against the wall next to the doorway.

I listened to the rising volume and made a guess.

My guess was: three seconds.

_Tap-tap-tap-tap_.

Two.

_Tap-tap-tap-tap_.

One.

Lena burst in breathless.

She didn't look dangerous; I didn't jam the flashlight in her throat.

"Found one," Lena gasped. She put her hands on her knees. "Forty-three down, twelve left, three right and thirteen left."

"Forty-three," Laurent muttered. "Hey Sam, on second thought bring the light over here."

I relaxed, but I didn't let go of the light—and I stayed behind them.

Laurent and Lena crouched over the emptied backpack and pulled out a notebook with a blue Bic pen stuck through the spiral rings. They wrote down Lena's numbers under the shine of my flashlight.

_Clink-clink-clink_.

The sound kept chiming in, but neither Laurent or Lena seemed to care about it.

After a few minutes Josh and Amrith came back. Lena told them about the gate, and they quietly packed their things into Josh's backpack.

"Come on, between us," Josh said as we lined up. "You won't know how to look out for Stalker Men."

I said I'd stay in the back.

In slow, single file, we trouped silently through Level Zero.

The dark was total. Laurent and Josh each picked up the unused road flares. But they didn't light them until we counted forty-three rooms. Then, Josh lit his and threw it down. Lena led us down a new direction. No one ever spoke. And once Josh had tossed the flare, one looked back to savor the light.

_Clink-clink-clink_.

The wind chimes grew louder as we walked. I still didn't know what they were. Then, near the end of our route, I saw a cloud of dark purple lights glinting on the wall

The cloud hung against a wall, waving faintly.

"What are those?" I asked.

"They're violets." Josh said. He corrected himself. "At least we call them that."

"They're starting to grow again. Level Zero becomes interesting other parts of the month," Lena said. "You just caught it in its boring phase."

I approached the lights.

They hung impossibly in the air, about an arm's length from the ground. The individual lights looked fuzzy, like a lens flare in a photograph.

But as I got closer, I noticed the lights were flat planes. Or, like origami made of light.

The flat planes of light made little cups, like flowers, drifting back and forth to a wind I couldn't see. Inside each cup was a spark. The spark was the yellow, violent brightness of a lighting match, contained within a single point. The sparks bounced inside the cups, and when it hit the light, it rang like a tin bell.

_Clink-clink-clink_.

About twenty flowers hung on the wall, chiming their eerie music.

"Do you not realize," I said quietly. "How beautiful these are?"

The bells waved beneath my gaze. Behind me, someone coughed.

"Uuuhhh," Josh said.

"We're physics majors," Laurent said.

Amrith patted my shoulder.

We continued down the halls.

Finally we came to a set of rooms that burned with light. Lena took us around them and finally entered a room with a shining line in it—a gate to the real world. Except this gate blazed brighter than anything I'd seen before. Light like this would swallow the violets.

I shielded my eyes. This line meant escape: it meant home. My world might not be normal anymore, but I could at least eat a sandwich and watch TV before facing the otherworldly horrors.

"We don't know where this gate leads, but you can't run away from us when we get to the other side," Lena said from my left.

"You have to agree to work with us," Amrith agreed.

"And it's in your best interest to do so," Laurent added.

"Also please don't punch me," Josh said.

I nodded.

Just ten minutes ago I'd suspected Laurent wanted to bash my brains in. I still did, a little bit.

But the gate was here, and if they'd wanted me dead, they could have done it. Frankly, I had no other option than to deal with them. It was the only way I could work with my world changed. I couldn't do it alone certainly—that had taken me to a parking garage, and to a memory I didn't want to relive.

It looked like I had some new friends.

We walked into the light.

#

Wind surged over us, driving into my chest and sucking out my breath. It tore away my voice, knocked away my sense of balance, and roared inside my ears, making me deaf.

Laurent shouted something next to me. It sounded like 'shit.'

I blinked my eyes open. The sky flashed in my sight: dark blue sky, clouds crashing into each other like waves in a storm.

We stood on a square of light grey concrete spotted with a few metal boxes. The boxes looked like air vents, communications equipment.

Where was the horizon?

Buildings towered around us. Buildings with no bottom in sight. No traffic, no pedestrians.

"Shit," I said. I didn't hear myself.

We'd landed on top of a skyscraper.

The evening sun slashed orange fire on the buildings around us—a forest of glass and steel needles, encircled lazily by hawks, reaching—shooting—up to the crashing, churning clouds.

Directly behind us, the CN tower loomed—larger than anything. It looked strange from such a high angle, almost alien. A blue line at the top hub signaled the construction of the new Tower Walk I read about in the news. Over the lake, an orange sun blazed on the water. I turned away but still felt the faint heat on my cheek.

My fingers curled up, pale and bloodless. The wind was faster here. It was colder too. My body temperature was unravelling like a thread.

Amrith hugged himself and bounced up and down. Josh tugged his hoodie tighter. Only Lena seemed unbothered by the cold. She surveyed the roof, and pointed to a concrete outcrop—a door. The door was industrial green, set in a concrete box at the corner of the rooftop. It looked so safe. So warm.

I took a careful step towards the door. The wind snaked beneath my feet. My feet wavered on the ground and I struggled to keep balance. Walking here was like walking on the ocean floor—filled with currents and pressure.

This'd make a good post for Stranger Danger—I could call it "as the hawk flies." Write about the urban jungle. Greg would get to use his camera.

Someone shouted. I didn't make out the words. Just kept on taking crude, clumsy steps towards the box.

The sinking sun cast long, thin shadows on the ground. As we neared the box I saw a hint of traffic in the streets below. I couldn't see the people or cars in the light-blur, but I saw shadows—small and distinct—trailing after their owners.

The streets lay deep, deep down.

My mouth tasted sour.

Lena got to the box first. She grabbed the nickel-plated door knob. She turned, pulled, rattled it, but the door didn't move.

This was not the brilliant escape I had in mind.

I edged closer to the box and the wind slackened. The release swung my balance off. I felt like a swimmer out of the ocean. I fought not to fall on my ass.

"No go," Lena shouted. She looked over at Josh. Josh nodded and left the group. He walked absurdly normal—hands shoved into his hoodie pocket, head bowed like a dog smelling out tracks.

"No picks?" Amrith asked. Laurent patted his pockets and shook his head.

The edge of the building was ten meters away, glowing in the light. It pulled.

I felt the tug in my navel, and in my ear a sick little voice spoke. It spoke so quiet I could hear it even in the deafening wind.

It asked, _aren't you gonna do it?_

No. No I was not.

You're not even a little curious?

I was not going to jeopardize my mental state—not now.

_You know you're gonna look eventually_.

Fat fucking chance.

Lena waved at me. I looked away from the edge.

"We're gonna—" Lena shouted. The wind cut off the last of her sentence. Her dark brown hair whipped across her face.

"What?" I asked.

Amrith pointed to Josh. Josh was waving from the other side of the building, away from the sun.

"We're—" Lena began again but the wind cut her off again.

"I can't hear you!" I said. I didn't hear myself.

Lena scrunched her face. She patted Amrith's shoulder and Amrith shouldered past me. Laurent and Lena followed him.

I looked at the sun-bleached edge again, and turned away. I was smarter than that. If I looked, I'd panic. If I panicked, I'd be useless. And I couldn't be useless, not after waking up in that parking garage.

Josh stood on the ledge on the other side, legs splayed and arms wrapped around his chest. He turned slowly in the wind, observing something.

I caught up with Lena, Amrith and Laurent. Laurent's yellow hipster hat flapped out his back pocket. His ironic beard and curled moustache had stayed though: I'd half-expected them to blow away.

Josh held out a hand and leaned over the empty space. The wind blew his hoodie into a parachute. His glasses shook against his forehead and he held them steady with the other hand.

He lowered his hips.

Tensed his legs.

Oh no.

Josh jumped.

And landed on air.

_We meet again_ , the voice announced.

Shut up shut up shut up.

"I'm not going!" I shouted.

The others didn't even turn back. Couldn't hear me. I ran after them and stumbled in the wind. Lena, Laurent and Amrith mounted the edge like it was a sidewalk curb, and casually walked onto the air.

They hung there, unmoving except for the wind tossing up their hair.

Lena turned her head. She waved me over.

"I'm not doing it!" I shouted.

Lena cupped her hand to her ear.

"I said!" I walked closer, "I'm not doing it!"

Still nothing. I walked closer.

"I SAID!" I screamed, "I'M NOT—HOLY SHIT!"

Deep drop.

Sheer drop.

Why was I so close?

_Welcome back fuckwad_.

The wall of the building loomed great, flat, and impossibly wide. Below, toy cars weaved the streets and tiny tops of hair trickled like sand in an hourglass down the sidewalks.

It played with my senses. It made me feel it was right-side up and I was hanging off of it like a little kid. And then, when I got used to that, it switched again. Now the wall loomed in front of me. I was an ant standing in front of something larger than I'd ever seen.

And the height. The yawning sensation of physics wanting you dead.

"Come on!" Lena shouted.

Josh looked side to side, like a dog sniffing out a dead thing. He looked down, tensed his legs again.

Jumped.

Josh landed a meter below the edge, safe and still on the air.

"I'm finding the bugs," he shouted at me. "Listen to Lena!"

"Come on!" Lena rolled her fingers. The invisible plane of non-gravity continued to hold her up.

I closed my eyes and raised my foot to the ledge.

Fuck it.

I jumped.

I hung in the air for an impossibly long second. I worried the wind would sweep me away, blast me into the streets and a pile of mashed organs.

But then I felt the tug of gravity. And as my feet drew level with Lena's, it stopped. I didn't feel a landing, or any hint of a surface—I just stopped moving.

I opened my eyes. Lena smiled. Amrith bit his lip and nodded.

"We call this type of glitch a platform!" Lena shouted. "Easier to say than invisible floor!"

I looked down. I wish I didn't.

Amrith and Laurent jumped down to Josh's level. Josh bent down and pulled something from his hoodie—the pocketknife he'd used back in Level Zero. He flipped it open. The sun flashed in the steel. Josh held it down.

"And this—" Lena grabbed my hand and pulled me down to the lower platform. I felt a bit dizzy—like I had two bodies moving at different speeds—but when my feet planted down I felt better.

Josh ran the knife along the air. A blue line glowed where it went. He curved the line and made it pierce itself.

The sigil flashed, and turned a deep, dark red.

Josh put his hand on the mark.

"What does—" I began, and stopped because I was screaming too hard to think.

Colors flashed and I realized they were buildings blurring in our speed. I couldn't hear myself. I couldn't hear anything. I thought my eardrums burst.

The landscape drifted with sickening speed. We passed the sun and its superheated shine blazed all the vision out my eyes. All I saw was the shadows of the others—crouched in place.

Only Laurent moved. He gripped his aluminum bat, held it ready, and looked at Josh.  
Josh nodded. He took away his hand. The symbol he'd carved glowed in the air like a sickness.

Laurent brought the bat down.

The sign turned blue.

And vanished.

My vision blackened. I saw blue skies. Then green trees. Then silver light.

Sound came back. I heard the roar of wind in my ears. I couldn't breath.

The trees were getting closer.

#

"We call that glitch 'dropping'" Lena said.

The forest around us hummed with buzzing insects. Tiny green bugs spiraled up and corkscrewed down. Birds tweeted, squirrels rustled, and a deer ran very, very quickly from us. In the distance, freeway traffic rumbled.

I looked at the tree we'd crashed into.

The poor thing bent onto the ground—the trunk a pulp of splinters and ruined wood. A deep score marked the earth where we'd kept going until grinding to a halt.

Josh said we'd fallen about half a kilometer out of the sky, with the accumulated speed far exceeding normal terminal velocity of a hundred miles per second.

And yet, when we'd pried ourselves out of our landing-hole, my clothes weren't even ripped. My soft white t-shirt still held its immaculate color, and my dark blue track pants still smelled slightly of clean laundry.

My socks were the only part of me that had suffered. They'd turned muddy and twiggy on the forest floor. I looked at them disgusted. They squelched in the dirt.

My feet hurt. I looked around and found a thin white log scoured with yellow-brown fungus. I hopped over and sat down on it.

"See," Lena began. "Laurent says that there're these things called gluons. They don't exist in Level Zero, so when you twist a gate you can sort of make the world forget about them for a while. Then when we turn physics back on we remain sorta immune to kinetic damage until our external force is equalized."

"You're so good at sounding smart Lena," Laurent said from the ruined tree. He dangled from a tree branch that now stuck vertically in the air, a foot above the ground. He dropped, and thunked onto the dirt. Lena gave Laurent the finger.

Amrith was throwing up in a bush a little way away. For the past five minutes he'd done it in quick, business-like hurks.

When he finished, he came out of the bushes and spat the last of it against a tree.

"So anyway we're a bit boned," Laurent told me. "I think we landed somewhere near Newmarket. Normally we'd open up a gate and get back by walking through Level Zero, but I don't think there's enough action here to do that."

My socks would be ruined after this, I concluded. When I got home, I was going to buy a big bag of socks. Fresh socks, ripped right out from the packaging with the scent of polymers still clinging to the fabric. That was just excellent stuff.

"Uh, I saw Josh on the phone. We might be able to get a cab." Amrith mumbled, wiping his mouth."

I'd go with grey socks. The fancy ones with the padding at the heels for extra odor absorption. Not that I had an odor problem.

Laurent shook his head. "Man you do those crazy backflip things but you can't take a little drop."

"It's different," Amrith said, coughing. "Very different."

"Amrith and Lena do this crazy parcour stuff," Laurent mentioned to me. "That was actually how we got them. See we needed some fit people to run some tests in Level Zero while Josh and I—"

"I'd like new track pants too," I murmured to myself. "Roots has good ones."

Lena, Amrith and Laurent looked at each other.

"You okay man?" Laurent asked.

"I'd like new socks," I said to the ground. "When we get back to Toronto."

"... Cool." Laurent said. He looked at Lena and shrugged. "Socks are cool."

"Oh man," Amrith clutched his stomach. He turned and stumbled back to the vomit-bush.

Far away, Josh railed on a cell phone. "We're right on off-ramp. You can't miss it. No. No. We were just—no. Come on!"

I took a big breath of woody, loamy air. The air had flavor out here, with a bitter edge from the highway exhaust.

It was getting dark. The rim of the sky blazed orange, but the dome was darkening. An impossibly thin crescent moon hung small and distant above us. The woods hid the setting sun. I could almost see the stars.

"Um," Lena said. "So, your Stalker Man—"

My Stalker Man?

"We probably confused it when we broke the gate. I'd guess you have about a month, maybe more time depending on how smart it is."

Laurent sat down in the leaves. Twigs snapped under his ass.

In the distance, Josh swore himself hoarse. He finished the call with a reedy, "fuck you!" and almost threw the phone away.

Josh stalked towards us wordlessly.

"So before that we're gonna have to meet Haze," Lena told me. She held her hands clasped like a doctor delivering bad news. Behind her, Josh sat down and glowered at the dirt. "We'll explain everything, and then he'll tell you how to undo the mark."

"We just fell. From half the height of the CN tower. My socks are dirty," I said. I lifted a leg for emphasis.

"You've gotta cut that out soon," Josh said. "It's only gonna get weirder. A drop is nothing."

"Fuck! Youuu!" Amrith called from the bushes.

"Anyway I managed to get a cab," Josh said. "Two of them."

"We'll be in touch," Lena said. "We'll bring you to Haze on Saturday. Before that you'll have to get some things."

"Socks." I said.

"Alright, I'm not riding with this guy," Josh said.

#

I thought about Level Zero on the ride back. It beat Amrith and Lena, talking alternately about parcour, internet memes, and the release of Mass Effect 3.

"You know the best name?" Lena asked. "German. German Shepard!" Amrith laughed. He slapped his thighs which I thought was a bit overboard. But then again, he'd carefully positioned himself next to Lena on the way over, inviting me to take the cab's shotgun seat.

The cab driver snorted at me as I entered the car. My dirty socks and overall glazed expression didn't invite much respect I guess. I ignored him, and did my best not to let the dirt scrape off into the car.

Level Zero—Laurent said—was an alien world. Dark and different.

It had its own rules, and developed by its own laws. Its creatures were strange—more thoughts than matter. Humans were not exactly welcome, and neither were our physics.

And now, according to Laurent, the stalker man that had marked me was wandering the real world. It had no power. It couldn't see, hear, or move anything without access to a gate. It would wander the city blind, deaf, and dumb, until it found a gate to enter

Until then, I could prepare. I could wander Level Zero in relative safety, I could learn from Lena, Laurent, and the others.

"Urdnot just has style though," Amrith said from the back.

"Urdnot Shepard kicks ass," Lena agreed.

We came closer and closer to Toronto. The highway stretched awesomely flat, like God's kitchen table, in front of us. A row of power-stations followed us.

The stars were out, bigger and brighter than anyone saw in the city. Dollars and cents added in orange light on the cab's dashboard.

"Commander Shepard never retreats, he just attacks in the opposite direction."

The city loomed ahead of us. I could see the CN Tower already. The cab's clock read 11: 03 pm. I'd have to take the last GO bus back to my place at Long Branch.

Level Zero and the stalker men were becoming a task in my mind—another check on a to-do list.  
That felt good. It felt normal. It felt like I could end this wierdness and go back to blogging.

And I had people to help me now.

I just wished they were a little cooler. It was easy to place confidence in James Bond. A set of gamer athletes not so much.

"When Commander Shepard does his taxes—" Lena began.

"Commander Shepard doesn't do taxes." Amrith cut in. "He's a Spectre."

"Shut up! This one's funny."

It'd be a long ride back home. I closed my eyes and thought about stalker men. And about violets made of light.

CHAPTER SEVEN: ALPHA GATE

"This knife," I said to the woman at the booth. "Is it sharp?"  
The woman at the engraving booth wrinkled her nose and adjusted her gold, bottlecap lenses. An open Nicholas Sparks novel lay face down on the glass counter. The woman took a long look at it, like an alcoholic looks at a misty bottle. Then she looked back at me.

"I think I need a sharp knife." I said.  
"They sell swords in Chinatown," the woman said.  
I nodded, dimly aware that this woman had just zinged me.  
Around me, Square One shoppers bustled. Mall sounds replayed on an endless track: crying babies, clapping feet, and peppy store music.  
Square One was the largest mall in Ontario. About seven years ago, it exploded onto Mississauga like a gigantic capitalist boil grown out of stucco. I didn't like it; most of the stores sold clothing, and you could find that at Wal-Mart. But I'd stepped the TEB Financial building overlooked the mall, and going downtown would take too much time.  
I clocked out of work early this Friday to pick up a pocket knife. Josh told me to. More specifically, he'd messaged me on Facebook.

_We meet haze at eight. Were going to lakeshore first to show you something. Get a knife for your lesbian self. Don't make it one of the stupid red swiss ones._

I didn't know how to buy knives. I didn't know where to buy knives. For an hour I'd trekked through the consumerist maze before finding the booth called Things Engraved, an engraving booth that engraved stuff from their stock of picture frames, pocket watches, water bottles, pens, toy cars, statuettes and, yes, pocket knives.  
The knife I pointed to was not a stupid red one. It was translucent blue plastic, like my first USB stick. A single silver blade cut through the plastic. A white Swiss cross stamped one end of the handle.

The price tag said $15.99. Not bad.

"I think I'll take this knife." I concluded. I took a twenty from my wallet and brandished it at the engraver lady.  
The lady blinked slowly. "What do you want engraved?".  
"I need it engraved?"  
The woman pointed to the sign that read "Things Engraved." I realized I had been zinged yet again.

"... Alright, I know exactly what to do," I said. The woman raised her eyebrows and I gave her the inscription.

While I was supposed to be working, I'd instead searched the internet, googling bugs, glitches, and quantum physics. I wanted to grasp Level Zero. I wanted to know what it did—or what my new friends thought it did. But while I blazed through cyperspace, I'd also found something else:

↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A

The Konami Code: the grandfather of video game glitches. In an ancient sci-fi shooter called Contra, it turned the player's 2D spaceship into God. The game was impossible to finish without the code. I figured the Level Zero crowd would dig it.  
The lady handed me the knife in a blue polyester bag. I didn't take out the blade to check the inscription because something told me normal people didn't open knives in public. I pocketed the bag instead.

I left through the mall's west entrance. It was a cold out. For the past week we'd sweltered under sudden humidity with an unseasonal twenty-five degree heat wave. Now, the thermometer had swung down just in time to fuck everyone's weekend plans. I heard on CTV that Sunday would have a low of seven degrees. Complete bullshit.

My white Pontiac waited for me in the middle of a deserted lot outside the Zellers. No one used the lot, since it sat fifty metres farther from the mall. I beeped the car open as I approached, and noticed that my walk had more confidence in it. Was this the joy of knife ownership?

I yanked the car door shut, swore, and rubbed my white hands together. The dashboard still had some residual warmth left, and I pressed my palms against it.  
When my hands had warmed, I pulled the blue bag out of my pocket and upended its contents on the passenger seat. The knife dropped out.

I picked it up.

It felt lighter than a knife should. I flipped it around in my hand. The knife was just a bit shorter than a pen. It felt like a toy.

I pulled the blade out with my thumb. A smooth, stainless-steel paddle emerged from the handle. The Konami Code shone along its side.

I folded the knife and slid it into my back pocket. I flung the blue bag into the well of the passenger seat and started the car. The engine hummed under the dashboard and hot air blasted out the air vents.

My eyes shone in the rearview mirror: cold, hard, icy blue. I looked away, and gunned the engine.

#

I spotted Josh and Lena outside the parking garage at my building. Josh sat on one side, Lena stood, stretching her calves against a wall, on the other.

I'd never told them where I live.

Josh spotted me first. He raised a hand, and called to Lena. Lena spun around, waved, and hopped onto the street.

I rolled down the windows. Josh passed me without a word and pulled the passenger door to my car open. Lena took the shotgun seat.

"Took you long enough," she said. "Did you get the knife?"

"I don't remember telling you to meet me here," I said. I clicked the transponder clipped to my rearview. The door to the parking garage rose.

"Knife," Josh said. He held out his hand. I took out the pocket knife and slapped it into his palm.

Josh drew it to eye level.

"You got a Swiss one," he announced dourly. "So you're gay?"

"I got a single-blade like you asked." I said. I rolled into the parking garage. It was mostly empty this early in the afternoon: just claustrophobic concrete pillars and orange lights. I turned through the narrow lane—my space was at the end of the garage, near the elevators.

"Not that it's bad to be gay," Josh continued. He pulled open the knife. "Ten percent of the world is—the fuck? What's this shit on the knife?"

"The—the Konami code." I said. "You've heard of it? Right? Lena?"

Josh held out the knife to Lena. She looked at it and shrugged.

"You people," I breathed. "What now?"

"Drop your stuff and get back down here. We're going to a park," Josh said.

#

I followed Josh and Lena's directions down the Queensway and onto Lakeshore. They were leading me to a place called Bay Park.

I Google Mapped the place before I left. Bay Park was a tendril of land, shaped a bit like a runny inkblot. It jutted out of the city, splashed across the water, and quickly fell into the deep, dark blue of Lake Ontario.

We took Lakeshore to get there. After a long drive, the neighborhoods dropped away. and we had a clear view of the lake shooting across the horizon. Just about the time we entered the outskirts of Toronto, Josh pointed out the park.

"Go up there."

I glanced over.

It always bothered me that any suitably large area of grass can be called a park. Bay Park was no exception—a peninsula of turf bordered by a thick copse of trees and lots of rocks to prevent erosion. A thin bridge of wooded turf connected the park to land.

I turned onto the bridge and the road became gravel. It curved gently towards the main body of the park. Pebbles pinged the underside of my car.  
Bay Park's parking lot was a gravel square spray painted with yellow parking lines. It could hold about four cars. Luckily, it was empty except for a green garbage drum in the middle of the painted lines.

I stopped the car. The tires skidded on the gravel.

Lena said. "What do you think?"

I got out. The cold lakefront air bit through my jacket. The sound of water lapping rocks came loud and clear here. It was cold so close to the lake, and the air smelled rancid. There were trees. Water. Squirrels probably having sex in the distance.

"It's nice?" I tried. I tucked my hands in my armpits. "Very... flat."

I took another whiff of lakefront air. The _smell_. Granted, Lake Ontario was so polluted that if you tried to swim in it you'd come out with a third mutant arm, but there was something beneath this lake-stench that twisted my stomach the wrong way.  
Lena and Josh got out as well and led me through the flatness towards the water. As we stepped onto the turf, my feet squelched in the grass. The mud tugged at my heels like it wanted me to stay.

We neared the edge of the turf. A thin strip of land, bordered by trees and a single-lane road, extended farther out into the lake. The strip arched back after few hundred metres, back towards land.

"Before we meet Haze we've got to show you something," Lena said.

We walked on the roadside. The wind howled across the water. Seagulls shrieked, and squirrels rustled in the trees. But beneath those tiny sounds, it was just the water and the stone. Lena, Josh, the trees and I seemed transitory—newcomers in a conversation that had gone on for a long, long time.

Josh announced to me. "You ever wonder how we got into Level Zero in the first place?"

I still hadn't fully acknowledged that Level Zero existed. I shook my head. "I thought you just entered using the line things—the gates."

Josh turned to me. The wind ruffled his close-cropped hair and dangled the string from his hoodie. "We enter through the gates. We open the gates, but the reason we're able to do that is because of this place."

I nodded just to keep him quiet.

Josh went on. "Haze found this place. Then he found us."

Josh kicked a pebble on the road. It skittered across the other side. He stopped, eyed another pebble, and lined himself up with it.

He kicked the pebble with everything he had, a perfect, fluid moment of rage against the tiny rock. It flew across the road and into the narrow strip of grass beyond it. It stuttered to a halt near some plastic nets keeping a mound of dirt from falling into the water.

"Haze is responsible for everything we do," Lena said. She looked straight at Josh.

"I also hate the guy," Josh announced to the lake.

"You hate everyone."

"Why do you guys keep calling him Haze?" I asked. "Doesn't sound like a name a parent gives their kid."

Josh smirked. He tilted his head. Lena flared her nostrils.

He walked ahead of us. Lena sneered. The expression came and went so fast I hardly saw it. "It's a code-name. We all have them. Mine's BBQ."

"BBQ?" I asked.

"They don't have to make sense." Lena said.

The cold and the smell mounted as we neared the lake. My chest felt sore.

Maybe it was the view. The land stood high enough for me to look down into the water. About a hundred metres off, the light blue of the shallows suddenly plunged into a deep, dark grey. Lake Ontario went about two hundred and fifty metres deep at its lowest point. It looked a lot deeper from here.

"You bought a change of clothes right?" Lena asked.

"What?"

"Didn't Josh mention it?"

Josh's shoulders hunched.

The road entered a blotch of land with more grass, three trees, a weather-beaten park bench and a dark green garbage can with pink spray-paint scrawling a stylized 'P' on the side. Even though we'd been walking for only a few minutes, I already felt tired. I looked at the bench as Josh and Lena trudged up the road.

The next bit of road lifted us higher and higher into the wind. In the distance, waves sloshed against the rocks. It may have been my imagination, but the sky seemed darker the longer we walked.

Why did it smell so bad here? Like rotting fish.

We reached the utmost extension of the land strip. From here the road curved on, bending back to the main body of the park. Looking back, I could almost see the park entrance from here.

Josh and Lena walked to the very edge of the road. Below the road, a cliff plunged into the water. Rocks spilled against it to protect it from erosion.  
There was something odd about the shape of the rocks at the very bottom, near the water. The rocks sort of fell apart from each other, and they curved in a strange way, almost as if—

"A cave?" I asked.

Lena nodded. Josh sat himself on the ground, and slowly removed his shoes. He placed them side by side on the side of the road. Lena kicked off her sandals.

"We're going in?" I asked, meaning "you're not getting me in there".

"You'll dry off inside," Lena said. "It's warm."

"... Oh," I said. "Cool then."

I pried off my own shoes. Josh raised an eyebrow.

I tossed my shoes off, shrugged off my jacket, and rolled my jean cuffs up to my knees. This was just spelunking. Odd, but the type of oddness I breathed for Stranger Danger.

The cliff was made of flaky limestone. Worn grey rocks piled up around it. The rocks didn't look sharp, but their skeins of slime looked slippery.

I grabbed the top of the cliff and tested my foot on the rocks. They stayed. I saw a clear path of rocks I could walk down to get to the cave.

I descended.

"Hey—what, wait!" Lena said. Josh swore. They followed after me. I was already halfway down the cliff face by the time they positioned themselves properly for climbing.

A wave crashed against the rocks. White foam slurred the shallow cave mouth. A spray of water dotted the back of my shirt and soaked through to my skin.

Josh and Lena were having some trouble on an unstable outcrop. Lena was trying to leverage her weight against a crag in the limestone beneath the rocks.

The rocks smelled like dirt and bloody tin. A thin green slime rubbed off of them and onto my hands. Out of nowhere, I remembered that caribou lived on slime up north.

I paused to bring a gooey hand to my nose. I sniffed. Disgusting.

"Slow down!" Lena shouted. "It's slippery!"

I snuck my foot between two rocks and lowered myself further towards the water. I was almost level with the cave mouth.

During none of this did I remember the stalker man's delusion. And I'd completely forgotten my worries about coincidentally going to a beach again—the same place mentioned in that stupid labyrinth story.

I came down a few more feet. My feet planted down on the rocks just above the water.

From here, the cave mouth looked large enough to admit a person if they crawled in on their knees. The mouth was half-filled with water, so that person would need to get pretty wet.

It was darker now. The clouds were a thick, dark grey that didn't make sense for the afternoon.

I edged closer to the cave. Ice-water swelled up and licked my heels. I winced. The lake burned cold. When the water receded I couldn't feel the soles of my feet.

My teeth chattered. I clamped my mouth shut and the tremors spread down my back.

"Are we going in?" I shouted up at Lena.

"Yeah." Lena answered. She came down to my height.

"I'll meet you inside!" Josh yelled from above. His feet stuttered on the rocks. A free hand pawed for a new handhold.

Lena sighed. "If my boobs get wet you're not allowed to stare."

"Understood," I said.

"I'll kick your ass."

"Lena, I can get all the boobs I want on the internet," I said. I was going to stare so much.

"Why don't you go in first?"

I looked at the cave entrance.

It wasn't so much a cave as a hole. An ugly hole. The rocks around it were draped with seaweed, plastic scraps, and flotillas of pine needles. The waves poured in and out of it, like steady breaths. When the water swelled in, I'd have just enough air to keep my head dry.

"The cold sucks," Lena said. "But it's not so bad once you get in."

"I can see your nipples," I said.

Lena's foot rose. She was in a perfect position to kick my kidneys out. I hopped into the water.

_Cold_.

"Shit!" I screamed.

_Cold_.

"What is it?" Lena asked.

_COLD_.

"Fucking hell!" I screwed my eyes shut. Think of boobs. Think of boobs. Just think of boobs.

The water knocked all the warmth out of me. It pierced my clothes and turned my skin into numb, rubbery latex. I flexed my fingers; my tendons groaned like taught cables. My knuckles hurt like drilled teeth.

Boobs boobs boobs. What were some good words for boobs? Ta-tas, that was a good one.

"Into the cave!" Lena shouted.

In India they were mangoes.

I forced my eyes open and saw the cave. I was right outside of it, and the cavern mouth gaped over my head like a monster ready to bite down.

Tits, it had a nice, vernacular aspiration to it.

I grabbed at the entrance and slipped. I tumbled farther into the water, up to my neck. I thrashed my arms to stay up but I couldn't feel them moving.

Mandarin Chinese had bo-bo, pronounced like bwoh-bwoh. Also man tou—meaning bread buns.

I gritted my teeth.

I kicked myself forward. I grabbed at the hole and stuck this time. The water ebbed out and grimy, gritty crap washed across my neck. It stank like blood and vomit.

I pulled myself further into the entrance. My knees knocked against the rocks. The ceiling snagged strands of my hair.

The walls of the hole hugged all sides of me. I breathed in and my chest strained against stone. The air tasted metal. I couldn't see anything ahead of me—I was blocking out all the light.

I felt around. The water sloshed around my shoulders. My hands stumbled through the water. Couldn't feel any rocks. I bent forward.

Gravity lurched. My face hit water. I recoiled. Hit my head on the ceiling.

A foot away, the floor fell away to nothing.

"You've got to turn around," Lena said. "On your back."

"What?" I asked. I did turn onto my back just to hear her better. It was hard in the tiny space, but when I did, my stomach flattened out and let fresh air and light into the channel. I saw Lena's head silhouetted at the mouth of the hole.

"And now you have to go down," Lena said. "When you hit the bottom pull yourself up the other side. You have to be facing up or otherwise you won't be able to bend.

"Excuse me?"

Lena explained as the water sloshed around my ears.

The depth below was a tunnel. It went straight down for about two metres, and then rose into a shallow cave on the other side. The tunnel was narrow, and the sharp curve below made it impossible to reach the cave by going down on your belly.

My nipples chafed against my shirt as I listened. My neck strained to keep my head up.

"You want me to go down there?" I asked her.

"Yeah. Don't hit your head." Lena said.

I fought to keep my head above the water. Cold water gulped my clothes. It was in my underwear and I was pretty sure my dick had imploded.

I groped behind me and felt down. The tunnel walls did indeed drop down, but I couldn't feel a bottom. It was narrow. Narrow enough that I wouldn't be able to come back up if there was just a dead end.

"It's easy once you get the hang of it." Lena said.

If I didn't get the hang of it I'd die.

Oh well.

I lifted my butt and angled my back on the drop. A vertebrae wailed in the small of my back.

The water splashed as I positioned myself for the plunge. I braced both arms at the start of the drop.

Cold water went all the way down.

"Feel ahead with your hands, then when you feel the curve, pull up." Lena said. "Uh, you're sure you're okay with this?"

I kicked off.

The water crashed into my ears. I jammed my eyes shut. Pulled myself down.

Cold shocked my face. Water jabbed inside my nose. I wanted to cough it out. Couldn't cough it out.

I scrambled further down. I felt my upturned feet sink below the water.

I slid along the tunnel. My shirt snagged a rock. I resisted the urge to panic it off. If I thrashed down here I'd lose air.

I hit the bottom of the tunnel. I felt it. My lungs burned. My head ached.

Where was the curve?

My air was draining fast. My stomach contracted. My diaphragm shuddered. I coughed out a bubble. I felt cold water on my lips.

I felt around some more. My head scraped the back of the tunnel.

Where was the curve Lena told me about?

I thrashed around blind. My universe shrank to the size of my body. Pain points lit up like fires, the slow, withering burn in my gut, the inferno in my throat, the hard, sharp thunderclaps in my head and the tiny sparks in my chest as I whipped my arms inside the hole.

My hands snagged the roof of something. I pulled.

My nose ground against rock. I kicked, shuddered, and swallowed a scream. More bubbles spewed out my nose. I kicked kicked kicked. My balance went off.

And I gasped.

Air.

Coughed.

Wonderful air.

Wheezed.

I couldn't see anything here either, but I didn't need to. I could breathe.

I waded around. The water still reached up to my chest, but the ground turned up in a gentle slope. The slope was made of sand and gravel. I crawled up it and felt sediments slide into the water.

About two steps out, my head bumped against rock. I put my hands out and felt empty space.  
The ground continued up. I got down and crawled until the slope evened out.

I came to dry rock. It was close enough to the ceiling to make sitting impossible. I could walk on my hands and knees at least. It was dry, and not cold.

I heard a splash of water and a gasp behind me.

"You made it?" Lena asked. "You okay?" She sneezed.

"Yeah." I said.

"Good." Lena coughed a big, hacking cough. "Fuck. I hate coming down here. Usually we just get Josh to do it."

Water slopped around in the darkness. Gravel shifted. I felt Lena crawl alongside me.

"Josh should be here soon," she murmured.

"What's this for?" I asked.

Wet clothes scuffed on dry rock. Something kicked my knee.

"We're going to teach you how to open gates to Level Zero," Lena said. "Then when we get out Haze will tell you how to get rid of the stalker man. After that, well... We—"

More silence. I heard breathing.

A splash came from behind us. Josh gasped, and then implied that the cave's mother was a prostitute.

"You guys there?" He called. He sounded different now. Bigger somehow.

We answered back, and he waded over to us.

"Christ," he muttered. "Okay. Sam, that you?"

"That's me," Lena said.

"Okay." Josh answered.

A hand slapped my knee.

"That's me." I answered.

"Good." Josh sat down on the sand and the dirt growled beneath him. I felt his shoulder push against mine. My other shoulder ground up against the cave wall.

He sighed. "So notice anything about the temperature?"

Lena didn't answer. I guessed it was a test for me. I couldn't think of anything.

"Notice how you're not shivering?" Josh asked. "That water must be about two degrees and we're fine right now.

"Comparatively fine," I admitted. I'd be happy about the temperature when my penis wasn't AWOL.

"I don't know how this place works," Josh said. "Haze says he does but he's an idiot."

Josh droned on. God he loved to talk. "The reason we can walk on air is because when you enter and exit Level Zero, the 'tags' or attributes that your body has like gravity, size, and density, don't work right. You remember the rooftop last week?"

I'd die remembering the rooftop, and the slow crawl along the horizon.

"Well with the right technique we could've just walked straight across the air. We didn't though because people would've seen us and you would've gone all screamy on us."

I snorted. Josh continued.

"I can explain all of the bugs," Josh said. "They make sense from a physics perspective. At least what they think about gluons and everything over at CERN. I'm going to skullfuck the physics world; the stuff I've learned from Level Zero will give us cheap power, instant computing maybe immortality at no cost. Level Zero is going to save the world."

"If I can figure out how this cave works." Josh muttered.

I blinked. The total darkness was tricking my vision. Clouds of green, yellow and blue fire exploded on the ceiling. I breathed in and the colours melted into each other.

"This cave is sort of like a focal point," Josh droned on.

His voice rumbled in the cave, picking up weird vibrations with the imperfections in the stone.

"Maybe because—well whatever. The point is, if there's any proof that Level Zero is real, and that there are laws surrounding it, it's here."

"This is the alpha gate—the first gate. The one true way into Level Zero."

I felt above my head. The ceiling was smooth, like pavement. I remembered Lena saying something about the islands being artificial. Was the island above built on concrete?

And what would happen if the concrete fell?

The rock beneath me felt warm now. My palms tightened against it and my fingernails made light scratches on it.

I couldn't hear my breathing. I couldn't hear anyone.

I blinked some more and the colours shifted.

"Just relax." Lena said from far away. Like lamplight in the fog, her words came out small, blurred and impossibly lonely. "Haze says it's all about your conscious state. Imagine that you're breathing yourself out."

"Haze is retarded," Josh interrupted, leaving out an unspoken "and so are you." His voice sounded closer, but still distant. "This gate is a natural law. It'll work whatever you do."

The colours in my eyes merged and sank and bloomed again. My lungs strained to pull oxygen out the thick air. In a sudden flash, purple dots popped across my vision, like the violets in Level Zero.

Level Zero was its own place. It was its own ecosystem with its own life cycle. And although it started as a dark hall of endless rooms, it had life.

My head felt full of cotton now.

I wondered, if a Stalker Man could control my actions, it could control others. And if its delusions didn't work on me anymore, if I was too smart to fall for them again, then couldn't it trick a few people I trusted? Couldn't it convince three people to go to a cavern no one knew about and to suffocate as they quietly used up their air?

Wouldn't it be a good trick?

The cavern groaned.

"... That's not supposed to happen." Josh said.

A vibration start in the rock, a buzz like the oscillations of a hummingbird wing. My head hurt from contact with the rock. I tried to lift it but it was so heavy now. I tried to move my hand, but it weighed a hundred pounds.

The hummingbird became a sparrow. My head rattled on the floor. My body shook and all I could see was bursts of light in a dark cave.

And then the vibrations became like no living creature. Great, gigantic thumps that slapped the earth.

Rock squealed. Momentum rushed through my chest and I, blind, wondered what it meant. The sound built, and behind it the earth knocked a steady, growing beat.

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 painting 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 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 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

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 crap-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 glass.

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.

And at the very back of this ruined pub, I saw Laurent and Amrith, eating with a hobo from a plate of pizza that bordered on medical malpractice.

Josh and Lena led me over to the table. Laurent and Amrith stood up as we approached.

"Made it safely?" Laurent asked.

"Had a close call." Lena said. She pulled out the chair opposite Amrith and sat down. "Also I totally got the handstand right this time." Amrith nodded in approval.

"This is the guy," Laurent said to the homeless guy. He cocked his head at me.

The hobo sat between Laurent and Amrith, and probably had some kind of crazy. He wore his hair long, flat-ironed, and held back in a ponytail. He had a beard. It shot from his chin at a thirty-degree angle, and was flecked with pizza grease and dots of fried batter. He sported a camouflage jacket, with pockets arranged like a Mao suit.

The homeless guy slowly masticated the last bits of a pizza slice. He moved his mouth in a slow rotation, like a horse going over grass. He swallowed, picked something out his teeth with a crusty white fingernail, and grunted at me. "Name's Haze."

This was Haze?

I don't know what I'd expected of the man who'd discovered Level Zero, the man who was purported to have the wisdom I needed to save myself from the Stalker Man, and my blue eyes, that still haunted my reflection. But for the discoverer of a new plane of existence.

More than derelict. Haze had the short, choppy movements of a paranoid, or a former addict. The wide, rolling eyes of a madman. If he'd asked me for a dollar on the street, I'd give him one out of pity.

Josh took the seat in front of Laurent, and I reluctantly sat down in the middle, right opposite Haze.

"Hear you've got a problem with a Stalker Man," Haze muttered. "Heard Josh didn't seal a gate."

Josh observed the floor.

"Always seal your gates," Haze said. He held a fist over his mouth and belted out a hacking, smoker's cough.

A shining pizza sat in the centre of the table on a sheet of grease-soaked cardboard. From all appearances, it had started life as a normal crappy pizza. But then some enterprising soul had poured nacho cheese, chilli, and tortillas on top of it. In addition, a few wilted california rolls lined the edges of the soggy crust. The beads of rice inside were stained saffron orange.

Haze wiped his beard with the back of his hand, and gestured for me to eat. I shook my head. He shrugged, and grabbed another slice. A california roll rolled off and bounced onto the table. He snatched the roll and popped it in his mouth.

He ate for a bit. The others ate as well. I smelled beer, and wondered if I could get some—but no waiters came out.

Out of nowhere, Haze slammed his fist on the table. The cutlery rattled.

"Stalker Men are no joke!" Haze shouted. "They're dangerous."

The outburst didn't effect the others. They went on eating.

"You're in shit now," Haze lowered his voice. He leaned in close so I could see the follicles of his beard and the big, black-head dimples on his nose. He smelled of nacho cheese. "But we're going to teach you how to survive. Do you know what you have to do?"

I shook my head.

Haze slammed a second palm on the table. The cheese wobbled on the pizza. "You've gotta go down! You've gotta go down there like Captain Ahab. You've gotta find your soul-item."

Haze backed off. He leaned back in his chair and looked up to the ceiling where a single light flickered above us. I saw dust floating in the light, like flowers in Level Zero.

"A Stalker Man," Haze began quietly, "takes a bit of you out to put a bit of it in. You just gotta find that bit he hid away, then you'll be whole again."

Laurent, Amrith and Lena looked at Haze like he was a God. Josh fumed into his food.

"Gary Weiss," Haze announced. He looked at all of us. "The first human to discover the Shadow Place, what he called the Jung Field and what you call Level Zero."

Josh coughed. He took out a blue Bic pen from his hoodie, pulled back the sleeve of his left arm. He started writing on his wrist.

Haze was staring at me. I looked away from Josh.

"A soul item," Haze continued, "will take many forms. Gary Weiss told me this; he is the only one to fight a stalker man and win. No easy answers here—just go down, find your Soul Item, and make yourself whole. Then run the fuck away. It's simple."

It sounded simple.

"Just find your soul-item and everything will be okay." Haze said. "This is something my master taught me."

Josh kicked my foot. I held back from punching the guy and looked over at him.

He held out his arm under the table. He'd written a message in blue ink on his arm, in big, capital letters.

HAZE IS AN ASS—IF YOU WANT TO LIVE LISTEN TO ME

Haze curled his lip, oblivious to the secret message. "Name it after some video game. In the eighties I was a student, and a local geophysics company—"

I nodded, too shocked to do anything else. My limit for random, crazy shit was near the breaking point already. I wanted to go home. I had a nice weekend lined up.

And on top of that, I was getting worried about something. It was probably nothing, but I'd checked my watch when we left Level Zero. Something wasn't right.

We'd entered Level Zero at roughly three o'clock.

We'd come out at five thirty.

The way I remembered it, we'd been inside for ten minutes tops.

There was no way to tell what Level Zero did with time. I'd decided to not notice. No point in worrying. But still, it bugged me.

And what had Josh said earlier about a Stalker Man?

I reached out and took a slice of pizza. It tasted like it looked—bad. The cheese burned my sinuses with a smell like burning plastic.

"Good man," Haze muttered.

"Need a beer too," I said.

"You're driving us back." Josh said.

"Fuck you."

Haze took the last slice of pizza and crammed it in his mouth. Nacho cheese dribbled down the corners of his mouth. He wiped the orange streams with a rough, brown napkin—the kind from public bathrooms. "Anyway, got it? Go down to Level Zero. Stay there until you find your Soul Item. Don't let the Stalker Man get you."

"And there's one more thing." Haze said quietly.

During Haze's speech, the others had freely talked, eaten and drank. But now, they settled down. Laurent stared into his beer. Amrith and Lena looked right at me. Josh twisted his lip and slowly, slowly shook his head; he tapped his bare arm again, and tugged his sleeve back down to cover up the message.

"You can't come near us again," Haze told me. "It's too dangerous."

What?

A tall, red-neck looking guy with a white wife-beater and a Hulk Hogan moustache came out from the kitchen.

"You guys alright?" He asked.

"We're fine." Haze rumbled.

The Hulk wannabe disappeared back into the kitchen, whistling to the jazz in the air.

"It's too dangerous for us to see you any more," Haze said. "Hell, this bunch have already risked their lives. After this, you're on your own."

And now everybody was staring at their feet.

"Anyway kids," Haze pushed himself up. The blocky, wooden chair creaked beneath him. "I'd better go see the wife. Nice meeting you Sam. Good luck."

Haze tossed some bills on the table. He kicked his chair away and headed out. He passed me as he went for the door. The smell of beer and cigarette smoke rolled off him.

Laurent waited until Haze left the door. When the door thunked shut, he grabbed an empty water bottle and poured the remains of his beer into it. He stuck the beet into his jacket pocket, and left.

"Sorry Sam," Lena murmured, avoiding eye contact. She and Amrith got up. Amrith came around and patted my shoulder. His hand was warm, comforting, strong—traitor.

Lena and Amrith left together. I didn't watch them go.

That was it?

Josh tapped my shoulder. "You're taking me to York Mills and Bayview."

"Sure." I said as we stood up.

Josh checked his wallet. "I want ice cream. We'll get ice cream along the way."

#

"Pull up there."

Josh pointed out a strip mall coming up on the road. It sat buried behind tall grass and a set of traffic lights that weren't lighting. A single shop—a 24/7 convenience store with a fluorescent orange sign—shone on the dark row.  
A red OPEN sign hung slanted in the door.

I made an illegal turn through the empty street, and pulled into the strip's lot.

I pulled the car to a stop and cranked up the parking brake.

"What do you want?" Josh asked. He pulled out his wallet. In the dark, I could see his hands best; a band of light fell across them as he pulled out a twenty. I remembered I'd paid 150 for cab fare.

"I'm good," I said, undoing my seatbelt.

"I'm offering you free ice cream." Josh said. He pulled open his door and stepped outside. Cold air brushed my shoulder.

"Chocolate."

"Fine. Let's go." Josh kicked his door shut. I was going to punch that kid some day. Again. my car did not suffer door-kicking gladly.

I got out of the car. The cold wrapped around me and I hunched my shoulders. Crickets creaked in the uncut grass in front of the lot, and Canada geese honked in the distance. Josh's sneakers clip-clopped the pavement.

Josh was almost at the store—a shadow in the sterile light.

I had to tell Josh about the time skip, I decided. Not because I was worried, but because it was strange. I had to learn about Level Zero.

Especially now that I had to go down there alone.

I breathed in the cold air. Josh entered store door open. A bell rang inside.

I gave up on being warm. Instead, I unbuttoned my dress shirt and let the cold in. I shifted, and adjusted my pants. My khakis were chafing my man-areas. I'd grown to hate them; they made me feel like I was working. TGIF.

I headed over to the store. In the steel-barred window, Josh pushed two ice cream sandwich-things over the counter. The cashier rang it up and threw a blue five-dollar note down. Josh picked up the snacks, swept up the bill, and came back out.

"This one has caramel in it," Josh said as he opened the door, ringing the store's bell. He handed me a popsicle.

I took the snack from Josh. It was encased in red and brown packaging with a picture of a dancing cow, the word MAGNUM written in red bubble letters on the side. The fudgesicle burned a cold rectangle in my hand.

Josh unwrapped his own thing—a white and red swirly tube that smelled of lemon. He bit off a chunk and chewed. Good way to get an ice cream headache.

I unwrapped the Magnum. It was a rocket-ship shaped stick of fudge about the size of a child's arm. I scraped the top off with my teeth and balled up the wrapper in my free hand.

"Haze is wrong." Josh said when he finished chewing. "I don't think going down into Level Zero will do anything to help you."

I hadn't been impressed by Haze, but then I wasn't that impressed by Josh either. I just nodded.

"I don't know that much about the Stalker Men," Josh said. Admitting it made his perma-scowl deepen. "But I've never heard Haze talk about bullshit soul items."

"Could be he just never saw the need."

Josh took another bite out of his popsicle. "Sounds weird to me. Like, suspicious shit."

I kept on nodding.

"How's the ice cream?" Josh asked.

"It's not ice cream," I said. "It's a fudgecicle."

"Fucking same thing."

We reached the end of the parking lot, the far side of the empty strip mall. A wooden fence rose up here, covered in spiky leaves and twisty nightshade.

Josh finished his popsicle and threw the stick on the ground. I still had a while to go on the Magnum.

"Let's go." I said. I'd tell him about the time-skip in the car, I decided. Where it was warm.

"Sure." Josh said from behind me. "Sam?"

"Yeah?" I asked, not looking.

"Sorry."

The world faded.

My sense of self became fuzzy, like the borders of my body were expanding and shrinking beyond the surface of my skin.

Clear, crystal thoughts went off like great ringing bells in my head.

Josh knew about the time-skip.

He suspected something.

His knife was out.

I looked up. The sky was full of stars.

#

"What are you doing with that Josh?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" He asked.

My eyes saw in black and white and grey. They saw squares of white dots, checkered out on a black sky. My ears heard static. Every sound came in distorted like someone had hit the world's whammy bar.

"The knife behind your back." I said. My voice sounded raspy in the altered soundscape, like it wasn't used to speaking.

"What knife?" Josh asked. His voice was far away. So far away.

"The knife you're holding out." I said. "The knife you're ready to—"

I leaped ahead. The edge of a knife prodded my kidneys but didn't even break my clothes. I spun.

"It got you," Josh said. His voice stuttered like a skipping record.

Josh jumped forward. He swung the knife level with my throat. I jumped back and missed.

I guess I should have been angry. But I wasn't. Emotion seemed very distant now. I still knew what anger was, maybe I could spell it on a blackboard, but I didn't think I could feel it. Not now.

But then, I'd already blocked out a lot of feelings. Why not block out anger?

Josh pulled out a golden blur.

It looked like Lena's earring.

He scraped his knife across it.

White light poured from the cut, sharp and clear and painfully bright. And it was painful. It hurt.

I turned away, repelled by the toxic, charring warmth on my skin.

"Fuck you for making me do this," Josh said. His voice now came clear now.

Too much light. Couldn't see. Couldn't hear. Light screaming at my nerve-endings, setting my world on fire. No senses, only pain.

But...

A shadow.

Shaped like a man. A man clutching a knife.

The light.

The shadow shuddered. It raised the knife. The blade went up. Had to stop it.

But the light.

The knife was coming closer now.

Had to stop it.

But the light.

HAD TO STOP IT.

The shadow's arm came down.

And froze.

The light faded. The hanging, silent stars reasserted their hold on the world.

"Fuck." Josh whispered.

CHAPTER NINE: HUNGER

"Sam? That you?" Greg asked.

"Yeah." I kicked off my shoes and set the box of popsicles—cold, flimsy and damp—onto the floor. I pushed the door with my ass and it creaked shut.

The apartment was dark, except for a blue glow from the television in the living room.

"Where were you?"

I ripped off my dress shirt. I loosened my belt with my other hand, toed off my socks, and kicked the hard nylon balls so they scurried away into the coat closet. I took to box from the floor and headed to Greg's voice.

Greg was watching TV.

He sat on the sofa. In one hand, he held an orange family-size bag of Spicy Doritos. In the other hand he held a dusty, wadded up handful of chips. The TV showed a National Geographic program. It seemed to be about kung fu. On screen, a bunch of angry Chinese people in period costumes were breaking coconuts with swords. A narrator was explaining how steel was forged in ancient China.

"I was with friends," I said. I thunked the box down on the coffee table. "Popsicle?"

"Huh?" Greg asked, still staring transfixed at the TV.

"They're really good," I said. I ripped a slit through the box flaps with my thumb, and withdrew a dewy Magnum popsicle.

"I'm good. Wait—so what were you doing?" Greg asked. He pulled a handful of Dorito-shrapnel from the bottom of the bag and crammed it into his mouth.

"I was with friends," I repeated.

"You have friends?" Greg asked.

I unwrapped the Magnum and crashed on the couch next to Greg.

On the TV, the voicover explained that ancient assassins had used chopsticks for weaponry. We watched as a neon skeleton took hold of a pair of CGI sticks, and battled with another one holding a dagger. The chopstick-skeleton slapped away a knife thrust, and jammed the chopsticks into the other's eye-socket.

"Kung PAO!" The narrator exclaimed.

"Think you can eat chips with chopsticks?" I asked.

Greg looked into bag open in his lap. "There's some with the spoons."

I went to the kitchen. The cutlery drawer held three metal chopsticks. I took two tossed them over to Greg. They bounced off his face. Greg swatted at them noncommittally.

The documentary showcased more unlikely weaponry: pens, fans, and miniature dogs that hid in sleeves—which I thought was cheating. Each weapon featured a CGI skeleton fight scene, and ended in a horribly pun.

"This is one weapon you don't want to cross!" The narrator said as one CGI skeleton pointed a crossbow at another and shot. Greg and I were trying to eat the Doritoes with chopsticks.

After Greg shoved a chip in his ear for the fifth time, I decided to go to bed.

#

I had a few bad dreams that night.

I dreamt I killed Josh.

I dreamt I was in danger.

But mostly I dreamt about the Stalker Man.

The cold started it. At first I shut it out. I bundled the covers tighter, and shoved a spare pillow against my chest. I had a few dreams-within-a-dream where I won the Kentucky Derby. I had another dream where I was a claymation alien on some kid's show. In another dream I fought a CGI skeleton with a dogbow—a crossbow that launched dogs.

But again and again the cold woke me up. Eventually I gave up trying to sleep and opened my eyes.

The Stalker Man.

Its head—white and hard and featureless—screamed loud and ugly and profane in my sight. It loomed like a mountain, dominating my field of vision, creating a dizzying sense of height, power, and dumb size.

The Stalker Man's face appeared distorted—a nightmare bulging in a fish-eye lens. Its face was lit from below, as if it held a flashlight in its hands. Shadows fell long and deep at the sides of its skull. They emphasized the paleness of its skin, and the way it stretched tight over the skull.

But it wasn't perfect, I noticed. The Stalker Man's skin didn't have pores, but I did see tiny wrinkles and golf-ball dimples—imperfections in the perfect, rubbery mask. The small errors just made it scarier. They made it real.

As I stared, the room grew slightly larger, then slightly smaller, like it was breathing, bending at the edges.

In typical nightmare-logic, I couldn't move.

I tried to look away. But the Stalker Man filled everything. My dirty room, with the mounds of dirty clothes, poster of Panda Lenin, and my two laptops open and glowing with white light, looked disturbingly accurate for a dream. I forced my eyes left, and saw red numbers spell 13:61 on my alarm clock. That wasn't helpful.

The entire time this dream played by, there was a sound: haaaaaa-waaaaa. It sounded like the ocean in a seashell. At every haaaaa. a cold breath blew on my forehead. At every waaaaa, the hairs on my stubble tingled.

The Stalker Man was breathing.

I tried to look at my fingers, because that's a good way to realize you're in a dream. But I still couldn't move.

The Stalker Man haaaaed. It waaaaaaed. Its slit-mouth gurgled, and sometimes a smell like rotting fish crept out. It yawned. For a second I saw a forked tongue, covered with slick black hair.

"What do you want?" I tried to say.

No sound came out. If the Stalker Man could read my mind, it didn't answer. It just stared. Its slit mouth sometimes twitching, sometimes tugging, but always haaaaa-waaaaing cold breath on my face.

Slowly, the smudgy red numbers on the clock changed.

The clock ticked down. From 13:61 to 13:60. Fro,m 13:60 to 13:59. And then down and down and down to 13:01.

When the flickered to 13:00. The Stalker Man twitched.

It licked its lips with its hairy tongue. A sound like falling rocks came from inside its stomach.

The shadows beneath its face widened, the haaaa-waaaa-ing grew fainter and fainter. The Stalker Man's blue eyes dimmed from electric blue to navy.

Then, like a shuttered candle, they winked out.

All the light was gone now, except for the red numbers of my clock. The current time was 12:59. My eyes hurt with bright green afterimages.

No wonder he left, I thought as my dream faded. 12:59 was real time.

The clock ticked up to 1:00 AM. I dreamed about tits.

#

"Are you writing?" Greg asked.

"I'm writing." I said. I put down my green Sealed Air thermos on the edge of the roof and pecked a few words on the laptop balanced on my knees. The wind wobbled my thermos. I secured it with a free hand.

The two of us stood on the roof of a Holiday Inn, located at the far end of Bay Street in downtown Toronto. The forty-story high building was still dwarfed by nearby skyscrapers.

The Inn was the best we could get—Greg's girlfriend's friend was in some managerial position, and had greeted us at the door to let us up to the rooftop. The only stipulation for the rooftop rental was that we refrain from mentioning Holiday Inn or the girlfriend's friend's name.

The rooftop actually looked nice: a line of trees split the stucco rectangle in two from the entrance, and a square of astro-turf complete with tasteful sculptures lounged on the northeast side. It looked like the hotel staff had intended to have guests up here, then closed it off for some reason.

"I still can't see any," Greg said. He held his camera up and scanned the sky for hawks. This was his business camera: the lens stretched as long as my thermos, and was covered with neat white numbers for God-knows-what photographic calculation.

I sat with my back to the raised ledge that bordered the rooftop. Depending on your height, the ledge either made a safety-catch for the rooftop wanderers, or a perfect tripping hazard.

I turned my head and saw a gigantic ad for the new Alice in Wonderland performance. A curvy Alice hung in silhouette in the middle of the ad—her skirt ruffled in what I assumed was a plunge down the rabbit hole. A line of flashing LEDs bordered the billboard. Most of them weren't working.

"Tell me what you're writing," Greg said. He turned a few of the lens knobs and the zoom lens.

"I'm not writing yet," I admitted. "Shouldn't you be photographing?"

"There's nothing here." Greg said. He was just complaining because he was cold: the poor guy hadn't understood that it gets windy this high up. He wore a plain white t-shirt that constantly billowed in the wind and a pair of shorts he should have kept at the gym.

"They'll come out. It's like fishing." I said.

Greg sat down next to me. I took another swig from my thermos. Greg looked like he hated me now.

"That toque looks warm." He said.

"Thanks," I said. It was warm: a double-knit I got from Zellers last year.

"Coffee looks good too." He said.

"And the laptop is nice and toasty." I said.

"Except you'll never have kids now." Greg said. He pointed to the laptop's proximity to my crotch.

"Don't want any." I said.

"Don't like kids?"

"They get dirty," I said. "We should have brought bacon."

"Bacon?"

"I'm pretty sure hawks can smell meat. Like, one tenth of a smell-atom is supposed to make them go crazy."

"That's sharks." Greg said.

"I'm pretty sure it works for birds too." I said.

We sat and watched for birds. Until Greg got some footage, the entire story was worthless. Stranger Danger was not a literary journal; it was a blog. Reporting on hawks that lived on skyscrapers was boring enough, but if we didn't have photos we wouldn't be able to hide the fact that we were pretty much out of ideas.

Greg seemed to hone in on my thought process. "I choose next week's thing." He said. I nodded.

"Still though, this is relaxing," I said. I leaned back on the ledge and rested my head on the rough stucco. "Just like fishing."

"Give me your hat or I'll eat your skin for warmth."

I gave Greg my hat.

I began to doze. The noise from below never rose above a faint murmur. The best part about it though, was that this was normal. Well, normal for me.

"Hey! I see one!" Greg shouted, working the camera-dildo.

Greg aimed at a building one street down, a modern one shaped like a sail made of green glass. Around the skyscraper's roof, a brown blur leaped, and circled in the air.

"Awesome." Greg whispered. "I can actually get a pretty good shot."

"Bacon." I said. "If only we had bacon."

More hawks came. They flew around the rooftops, rolling lazily through the air currents. Sometimes they joined together like schools of fish. Sometimes they scattered like seeds thrown in the wind. Sometimes they dropped. They dropped down down down to another rooftop, skimmed just above its surface, and rose again.

Greg went into full-on photographer mode, talking about angles and light and junk. You couldn't tell he worked in ad analysis and spent his days making slides about marketing campaigns.

I typed out a few words for the article. But I expected the photos to carry most of the weight, so I played bejeweled on Facebook instead.

When I got bored of that, I folded the laptop and set it down next to my thermos. I folded my arms over the ledge, and looked down into the street.

The cars and people moved like toys beneath us. I kept expecting them to vanish, like a video game still rendering, but they just kept on moving in perfect hi-def.

The LEDs on the Alice in Wonderland ad blinked on and off in front of me.

As I stared, the lights blew out. Maybe there'd been a short circuit.

But then, one light on the sign's ride side burst on. Bright blue light stuttered on.

Another light blinked on the left side.

They almost looked like eyes.

#

I dreamt of the Stalker Man again.

He stood in front of me, just like before. Big eyes, big, white face, cold breath and slit mouth.

The Stalker Man's breath seemed colder now. When he breathed out, my cheeks burned. When he breathed in they numbed out. My nose started to run. It oozed a slick, slimy trail across my lips and down my chin. I wanted to wipe my nose but I couldn't move. I couldn't even think about moving.

Just like last night, I could see my clock. Today it read 13:23. The clock was ticking down, just like last night.

When the clock ticked down to 13:00, the Stalker Man wheezed. It snuffled. It gently rolled its double jointed shoulders.

Darkness welled at the edges of my vision. With every breath it grew deeper and the Stalker Man grew darker. Soon it was just a pair of eyes, watching me in the dark.

Then, not even that.

#

I swiped my entry card over the turnstile-gate. The card reader beeped green.

I slid past it and adjusted my man-bag. The card snapped back to the lanyard clipped to my pants. The pants in question were the green and gold company sweat pants. We were supposed to wear them on our off-hours and Sunday morning was my time off. I also had a tie on.

TEB's foyer was an orgy of neutral colours: taupe, eggshell and beige predominated. Sleek-looking, uncomfortable office furniture sat at specially chosen areas to make the place look homey, but in a businesslike way. Bad, minimalist art held prime real estate.

I headed to the elevator lobby and called down an elevator. One came almost immediately. I stepped inside, checked the mirror in the back for lint in my hair, and pushed the button to the second floor.

The doors rumbled shut. I leaned against the mirror and sighed.

Employers were supposed to respect work-life balance. Overtime pay was nice, but that money couldn't buy back time I needed to do stuff, like fight Stalker Men and eat delicious food.

But this morning I'd got an email from Henry. The interns had some sort of play-day and I had to come in and make sure no one lost an eye.

The elevator stopped.

The doors opened. My eyes widened.

"Holy fuck." I whispered.

A sea of teenagers.

They came in all genders, shapes, and levels of awful fashion sense. I saw a group of girls in pastel tank tops and jeans, and two guys in full-on executive suits. I saw ill-fitting dress shirts, horrible polos, skirts that ran too long, too short, and one with a slit in it like a nightclub hostess. The guys wore so much hair gel it sparkled, and the girls wore makeup for clubbing in a very dark club.

"Mr. Flautt!"

A young, over-confident voice called my name. I looked around, still dazed. Out of the crowd emerged a teenager, a heavily muscled one with five-o'clock shadow, wearing a suit and tie I'd seen in the windows at Le Chateau—a black-purple-steel grey colour scheme that looked like money and douchebaggery.

"Oh hey..." I said. The teenager held out his hand and I shook it. I saw a Blackberry clip at his  
belt. I didn't even own a phone anymore.

"Gary." I remembered.

Gary grinned. "I thought you'd forgotten me!"

"No no," I said. "Swim team guy. That's you."

"Haha. Yeah," Gary rattled off a perfect business-laugh. "So you're running the orientation?"

Orientation?

"I'll get back to you on that," I said. "Excuse me."

I shouldered through the crowded elevator lobby. The teenagers turned to look at me—in awe of the guy with the pass-card lanyard. I recognized a few faces that I'd interviewed. Names sprang up as I pushed past them—Samantha, Albert, Inder.

The crowd thinned immediately as I left the elevator lobby and entered the office proper. An empty cubicle-farm greeted me. Seeing them deserted was a little disconcerting. I could hear the echoes of phones and typing.

"Sam!"

A hand waved. It was Henry, dressed in his usual outfit of company sweats and hoodie. I realized with horror that we were pants-buddies.

Henry sat at a conference table between Rohit and that albino guy from marketing—Sean. The three of each wielded sheaves of paper and serious-looking clip-boards.

"Like the outfit." Henry said. I couldn't detect any sarcasm. "Fresh. Exciting."

I took a seat opposite him. I dropped my man-bag filled with nothing next to me.

"So the room is booked and you and Rohit just need to give your presentation." Henry said.

Presentation?

"Just do it like you did last year." Henry continued.

Rohit's eyebrow quirked.

"Answer any questions, yadda-yadda, welcome them to the company, let them know that interns are a vital part of our family. And are part of a holistic body that gets their hands dirty to do some goddamn finance."

"Henry..." Rohit began. "Sarah did the presentation with me last year. Not Sam."

"Oh." Henry said. "Okay then. Rohit takes point and Sam can read off the powerpoints. It's not hard."

Overtime pay, I thought. Think of overtime pay.

#

Henry and Sean ferried the interns down the elevators, leading them to the presentation room on the first floor. Rohit and I stayed behind to go over the slides.

"Hey, Sam. Sorry about the short notice," Rohit said. He packed a bundle of papers under his arm. I saw lots of blue ink on his papers. Lots of notes. "This must be pretty random."

"It's fine," I said. It wasn't, but overtime pay

The two of us took the elevator down. Rohit in his business-casual, myself in sweats and a tie. Rohit carried a stack of slides. I carried an empty bag and a single sheet outlining the orientation for the new crop of interns.

People clapped as we entered the presentation room—a lecture style room splashed with TEB's gold and green. Rohit told a joke that wasn't funny, and everyone laughed. I stumbled along.

"The TEB internship is all about getting dirty!" Rohit shouted gleefully. The interns clapped. "We push the envelope of hard work and transparency."

"Now, you've all volunteered to work for us, for free, and we respect that. We respect that so much that we're not getting paid to be here today!"

The interns clapped. My mouth hung open.

"Henry's not getting paid, he just loves to be here." Rohit pointed out Henry at the head of the audience.

The interns clapped.

"Sam's not getting paid; he just gives one hundred and ten percent!" Rohit said. The interns clapped again.

"And I'm not getting paid either. Because work isn't about money! It's about play!"

Fuck this shit.

"Next slide Sam." Rohit said.

I raised an eyebrow at him. People laughed.

The projector glowed a single blue light. I clicked the next slide and it flickered. At the front row, one of the better-dressed interns adjusted his glasses. The blue-white power-point caught the glass.

Glowing eyes again.

#

I dreamt of the Stalker Man that night.

Its eyes glowed bright blue—shining through my closed eyelids. When I opened my eyes, the Stalker Man was there.

The light from its eyes spilled across the walls, blazed in rows on the floorboards, and glowed along the sallow, stretched skin of the Stalker Man.

I'd never realized how huge the Stalker Man was before. Now, in the searchlight-shine of its eyes, I understood.

The Stalker Man's hands were planted at either side of my bed. Its feet pushed into the walls at the corners of my room. Its long, thin limbs were bunched up. Its double-jointed arms had folded over to make room for itself. The thing's double-elbows scraped the walls of my bedroom. Its arched back rose to the ceiling.

The Stalker Man exhaled a cold breath. So cold it hurt. It stiffened my shirt and burned the feeling out of my skin.

I could hardly breathe in this nightmare. The weight of a flipped Volvo pushed down on my chest. The clock on my bedside was just out of my range of vision.

I strained my eyes to decipher the half-numbers in the clock. I think it said 13:21. If the Stalker Men followed the pattern from last time, he would leave at 13:00, when the world entered real time.

Just twenty minutes.

I stared at the clock. I ignored the Stalker Man's gaze, the shifting limbs and the strange sounds like falling rocks that came from its bubbling, shifting stomach.

The clock changed to 13:20. It was counting down.

I exhaled weakly. Yes. It was moving. I'd survive this. The Stalker Men watched me, its pale, drawn face still like a wax mask. It would leave. I knew it would leave. This was just a nightmare.

The clock was at 13:15.

I strained to breath. I could take in just enough air to keep from panicking, but only if I gave it all my concentration. After a while, breathing became exhausting. A thin sheen of sweat appeared on my forehead, and when my scalp tightened I realized that it was freezing in my hair.

13:10.

I stopped breathing, just for a bit. My lungs felt full of coal, slowly lighting.

13:09.

Pain was too much. I pushed, pulled my lungs to breath again. They did. The fires dwindled. But my chest was so heavy now. I was so heavy and so cold beneath the Stalker Man's eyes.

13:08.

It never stopped staring.

13:07.

A wave of nausea ripped through my chest and pooled behind my eyes. Stars burst inside my vision. The weight on my chest grew. I sucked in air but it was all so cold now.

13:05.

The coals in my gut crackled, hissed, popped. Tongues of heat licking up my throat, roaring against the cold.

13:03.

No more. I looked out to clock, straining my eyes.

13:00.

Just pain, just pain, but it was okay—it was just a dream. And it would end...

Now.

12:59.

The Stalker Man didn't move.

I tried to get. I tried to scream. I couldn't, so I screamed inside my head. I stared at my lifeless body and willed it to get up and run.

I didn't move. Why didn't I move?

The Stalker Man stared, its face a perfect blank. Its blue eyes shone so bright they torched whorls of colour in my vision.

" _You_."

The voice came from the bottom of the Stalker Man's chest. It sounded like it was squeezing several organs to make that noise.

My fingers twitched. My legs shuddered. I wasn't moving them.

My feet swept across the bed. My hands pushed me off my back and to a crouch. Light. Blue blinding light.

This was a dream this was a dream dreamdreamdreamdream. I tried to get up. Why wasn't I getting up? I needed out. I needed to run.

I fought. I strained. But then my lungs opened up, taking in a rich, cool breath of air; a realization like poison bloomed inside my head.

I wasn't in control. I never had been.

The Stalker Man rumbled. " _Rise_."

CHAPTER TEN: NIGHTMARE

The Stalker Man rumbled. " _Rise_."

The tiny muscles in my spine twitched, then pulled. My back stiffened. The still and silent room with its piles of books, tech, and clothes spun in my vision as my legs swept across the mattress and I lurched out of bed. My arms hung at my sides—dead weight.

My lungs opened. Sweet, cold air rushed in, banking the fires in my gut. Sweet, yes, but also sour, tinged with the Stalker Man's gross scent of chemical sweat.

The Stalker Man hung above me, still straddling my bed. I turned to look at it, except I didn't turn. I didn't move at all. All I could see of the Stalker Man was a thin, milk arm cast in reflected blue light.

I tried again to turn, to move on my own. I couldn't.

I took another breath and I realized I wasn't controlling it. An instant revulsion walloped my gut, demanding I throw up. But the only reaction my body showed to this puppeteering was a tickling, gagging feeling in the back of my throat.

I felt like the Stalker Man's cold, long, baby-soft hands were reaching inside of me. I felt like they were snaking along my nerve centres, caressing them, smoothing them out, and twanging them like guitar strings, playing my body how it wanted.

The Stalker Man's head shifted—I could tell by the shuffling light. A patch of cold settled on the back of my neck and I knew it was staring at me.

" _Move_."

My foot rose. It went down. I couldn't stop its fall any more than stop a speeding truck. But still I tried. I pushed on my disgust like a lever, trying to break the thing's hold. But all that did was worsen the gagging sensation at the back of my throat.

I shouldered the door open and swung into the hallway. The light from my room blazed behind me. I couldn't see anything but colour-burn. I moved blind, but I moved. I swerved around furniture I didn't know was there. I stepped around floorboards I didn't know squeaked as my track pants swished across the floor. I danced through the living room, across the kitchenette, and up to the front door. At the door, my elbow flew up in a crude, broad swing. The blow smarted. Impact rippled up my to my shoulder.

The door creaked open. I'd somehow hit the lock.

I stepped barefoot into the hallway. The carpet prickled my bare soles. I walked down the hall, into the darkness.

Without the Stalker Man's searchlight eyes, I couldn't see where I was going. But I kept on walking. I passed dark windows, fractured with lines of traffic-light. I passed gently humming air vents and still, silent doors—each one staring at me with a tiny brass peephole.

I came to the elevator. I twirled; my palm smacked the call button.

The elevator arrived instantly. I stepped inside and the floor turned to cool granite tiles the colour of static.

My elbow swung back. It jammed a button I didn't see.

The doors closed behind me. The elevator jerked down.

I stayed facing the back of the elevator.

The elevator halted. The doors opened. I walked backwards out of it, never stumbling.

I crossed the lobby. The lights were on but the security desk was empty. Where was the guard?

I came up to the heavy, plate glass front doors. My hands rose and I pushed them apart. Usually I needed both hands to inch them open, but now the doors swayed apart for me. I shuddered at my easy strength.

Outside was colder, but my skin was still so numb that the air felt almost warm. It was a regular sort of night. Cool air brushed against my face. Crickets chirped far away. Streetlights shone for no one in the ring road around the apartment.

I walked across the empty road, passing the light of a streetlamp and mounting the curb onto the circular lawn around the apartment. Damp grass pricked my bare feet.

I moved ahead, finding even ground like magic. When I sat in the middle of the lawn, away from the streetlight's reach, I stopped. Turned around.

My lungs lifted by themselves again. The breath felt perfectly measured: just enough to keep me from death.

I waited, staring. The apartment shot up in front of me, a column of black studded with gold light, piercing an inky blue sky.

It is a strange thing, to see a building that you know at nighttime. To me, the apartment looked like something wild. The concrete, rutted and stained, the windows, smudged and distant, the balconies, filled with junk, old beach chairs, piles of faded toys, seem less man-made and more like some desolate cliff where humanity was upended, and left to unravel.

In this darkened land, on a window fourteen stories up, blue search-lights lit up—columns of blue erupting from a dark room, reflecting in the walls and raising shadows where they passed.

The Stalker Man.

The lights bobbed. A gigantic, white hand slunk out the window, trailing stark shadows beneath it. Long, thin fingers spread out on the concrete walls.

The fingers tightened across the stone. The Stalker Man's pale, thin head emerged and then its body, extruding snakelike from the window.

It crawled out.

The Stalker Man scurried like a spider—fingers and toes gripping the walls impossibly tight. Sometimes, the thing's arms turned at unnatural angles, full hundred-and-eighty turns that would snap a normal person. And its movement looked off to me: either too fast or too still, like a jerky claymation puppet.

The Stalker Man's glowing eyes scanned back and forth as it walked down the sheer wall. Except it didn't move its head like it was trying to look for something; it moved like it was smelling. It moved like a wolf moves.

The nightmare crawled, bound for me. And I couldn't turn away. My breath still came and went, calm and measured. Even the gagging at the back of my throat was fading, and I realized I probably didn't control my heartbeat. The Stalker Man owned it. It held my own heart in its grip.

The Stalker Man's skeletal hand touched the ground. The other came down as well and it righted itself back to regular gravity.

The Stalker Man rose. Its limbs stretched out, its double-joints unfolding. It was tall: twelve feet at least—taller than the trees. How could something like that fit in Level Zero's tiny rooms?

The Stalker Man strode towards me, eyes blazing blue, arms sweeping across the lawn, legs snapping, twitching, stopping in their horrible, shuddering way.

Scream, I thought. You have to scream.

The Stalker Man's feet pattered across the grass like rain. Its legs advancing like a thresher rolling closer and closer. The Stalker Man's headlight eyes fixed on me.

The light grew brighter. It washed out the Stalker Man—turning it into a stick-man as it came closer. Before my vision vanished completely, I realized that the stars ran in neat grid-lines.

The Stalker Man shook in front of me. Its head, blazing blue came down right in front of me. The light burned inside my eyes. It felt like the light was burning away my body like a fire burns the rock away from metal. It felt like deletion. It felt like metamorphosis.

" _Open_." The Stalker Man said.

My hands reached into my pocket. I felt something. The handle of a knife.

It was burning my palm.

#

Yellow lights.

Yellow lights, floating like dandelion fluff.

"What the hell?" I whispered.

The lights didn't answer me. They just floated in the intangible breeze.

I was reclining against a wall, breathing stuffy air. The wall felt warm on the back of my neck—body temperature, like a toilet seat someone just sat on.

A shivering fit shot through me, then passed. I curled my hands into fists.

I could move again.

And for a while, that was enough. The simple joy of control gave me hope in the sudden darkness. I squeezed my hands. I relished the pain of my fingernails digging into my palm.

I pushed myself up. My bare feet felt perfectly comfortable on the floor of Level Zero's womblike warmth. Of course this was Level Zero.

Now, how did I get here?

The lights swayed in random motions. They reminded me of the violets I'd seen before—only these were smaller, and unmoored.

One of them drifted past my eyes. I held out my hand to catch it and—

"Ow!" I pulled my hand back. The light flew up and away from me—faster than before. It bounced off the ceiling and glided towards the other end of the room.

I inspected my hand in the mottled light. No marks. But there'd been pain. Heat. Like touching a bare light bulb.

I stuck my palm inside my mouth and looked around.

This room was like all the Level Zero rooms. Same four corridors. Same endless darkness. The only difference was the lights—and Lena said a long time ago that they became more common depending on the time of month.

There was no gate in this room.

So how'd I come here?

The Stalker Man.

I'd blocked out the events just a few minutes before. The memory returned now. My mouth turned sour thinking about the details, about the puppet I'd become.

But the Stalker Man wasn't here now. It was just me.

I noticed a digging sensation in my pocket. I still had the knife. I pulled it out.

I didn't get what had just happened, but I had the knife. That meant I could create a gate and go back home.

I unfolded the blade. The Konami Code caught in the faint dandelion-light. I grinned.

It didn't make sense to lock me in when I had a key out.

_You're right_ , a voice inside my gut said. _That wouldn't make any sense at all_.

One of the dandelion-lights bounced off the back of my head. It burned. I swatted it away with my free hand. The light zoomed away. It collided with another. Then both the dandelions went off in a whole new pattern.

But the dandelions didn't matter; I was getting out.

I turned around. I propped one hand on the wall and pressed the knife against the wall. The metal shuddered in my hand. I scraped the blade across the warm, black material.

No blue light. The wall remained black, blank, warm.

I stabbed it again.

No light.

Again.

The blade folded. The metal bit the flesh of my fingers. I grunted and sucked the cut. Tasted like rank copper.

Shit shit shit shit. I breathed deep. Had to stay calm.

I inspected the blade. A thin skein of blood marked the top end of the edge. As I watched, the blood slowly changed colour—neon purple, then green, then yellow.

I'd used this knife to open a gate in Level Zero just three days ago. It had done it then, it could do it now.

I got on my knees. Another dandelion bounced off my cheek. I yelped. I tried to punch the thing but it got away from me.

Okay.

I knelt over the floor with the knife in front of my chest, held out like I was going to fence with the floor.

Keep calm keep calm keep calm.

I scraped the blade across the floor.

No light, just a miserable little _shck_ sound as the blade went across the warm, plasticy material.

"Huh." I said.

Don't panic.

_Shck_.I tried again.

No light.

Don't panic don't panic.

_Shck_. I tried again.

No light.

Don'tpanicdon'tpanicdon't—

"FUCK!" I roared. I threw the knife away. It vanished through the doorway opposite me, and I heard it clatter.

"FUCK NO!" I screamed. I beat the ground like a toddler. I punched the floor and the pain just made me madder.

There were rules. And they told me if I followed the rules I could get back to my normal life.

I screamed. Tears mingled with the sweat on my cheeks. I tasted salt and blood. I spat and it dribbled down my lips.

So much for rules.

My breath shook. My chest rattled. My nose ran. I wiped it against my shirt. I pushed down my fear and my anger into a ball, deep in the pit of my stomach where it could be focused like a laser beam.

This room, like all of Level Zero's rooms, had four doors carved into the sides. I chose one at random and took it out of the room.

Whatever the Stalker Man wanted, I wasn't going to do it. I wouldn't disappear in Level Zero.

There had to be a gate somewhere here.

#

The dandelion-lights were in every room now. Sometimes a room had only three lonely lights, sometimes they held flurries of them. I walked through them all. They burned, but not for long before they bounced off of me.

After about half an hour of random walking, I heard a sound.

_Zzzzzzzz_.

It came from the room to my left—a room filled with dandelion-lights. Going in would burn like a bitch.

I tucked my arms inside my shirt and rode up the neck to cover the bottom of my face. It looked retarded but the fabric would protect me from the burning lights. Thus equipped, I walked in.

_Zzzzzzz_.

The light-balls parted as I walked through them. My exposed ears stung.

I saw the light that didn't move.

A square of yellow light, hanging in the air. It buzzed like bad lighting.

When I approached, it flashed off, and reappeared three feet away. The dandelion lights bounced off of it.

I took a step towards the square. It shuddered. It flashed away another foot, near the wall. It turned blue.

Cool.

I headed back through the other door.

As I continued into Level Zero I saw other squares running around. They all backed away from me as I came near, but never left their rooms.

The squares didn't behave like the flower-lights. They seemed to move how they wanted to, rather than to some sort of pattern. They didn't seem to like me.

I walked. My mind grew hazy.

What did the Stalker Man want?

In the crazy lights and the growing heat, my mind did funny things.

The lights grew larger. They made music, good music. Like an improv jazz band or a really nice day at the park. The dandelion-lights chimed and the light-squares croaked like exotic birds.

The tap-tap of my feet fell into step with the music, or maybe the music changed to suit my walking. It didn't matter. The music helped me move. After so long inside the dark with no goal and no direction, it buoyed my legs to keep walking.

In fact, after a while I felt stronger. The rhythm and the clanging melodies of the sparkling darkness enervated me. They stretched out my muscles, they filled my lungs and pumped into my blood.

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 entity 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 fuck 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 fucked 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 shit.

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 shit 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 glass, 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 passed 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 bloody pulp, like it had been scraped 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 badass, reality-warping thermonuclear reaction, going to shit.

Slowly, Jon said.

"We are angels."

#

"You're in shit 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 scraped against the glass.

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 glass 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 bump. 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.

"No." Josh said, as if he heard my thoughts. "I think they're very, very close."

The car jumped. I started. I jammed the brake but the car sped up. The trees whirred by. The tires whined. I moved the wheel but felt the car swerve too fast. We were in a skid.

Josh's entire chest was on fire. It was spreading to his arms now. The fire slowly eclipsed his elbows, his forearms, his hands. It washed over the back of his head and spilled onto his face. Josh was made of light now: an angel.

"Do you know what retards say about death?" Josh asked. The fire covered his eyes but it turned red. Red eyes in blue fire.

"They say death gives us life. That a coin can't exist without its other half."

The car was going fast. Too fast. I jammed the break but nothing happened. Too much speed.  
The engine roared in the pit of my stomach.

"They don't know we don't live. Not really."

Too much momentum.

"Just like Jonathan."

So much noise.

"Just like you."

Breaking glass. Spinning headlights.

Cold air and cold snow.

Darkness.

#

My vision blurred. Blue lights. Red lights. Yellow lights. Cold wind. So cold.

I moaned and felt carpet on my palms. Not my carpet. I could tell foreign carpet from authentic homestyle carpet. This carpet felt ropey, made from thick, corded fabric. Not like my threadbare IKEA rug.

I bent double. Sleep pushed out at my face. My eyelids swelled shut. I fought them open. Had to see. Had to fight.

A cold breeze blew down my neck. I shuddered.

Where was I?

A room, a small and dirty basement. Concrete walls with neon orange spray paint marking buried utility pipes and the smell of old furniture soaked with countless beer-spills.

I rolled against a sofa. It was a threadbare yellow futon with white stuffing peeking out.  
Darkness hung like cobwebs in the corners of this room. White pine beams criss-crossed the  
white stucco ceiling.

This was not my home.

But it was someone's home. A TV sat in the corner, and a laptop perched on a stained mahogany coffee-table. I saw a lime green Gameboy Colour, which was strange because I'd thrown out my own watermelon-pink one when I was in the sixth grade.

A staircase with a bare bulb hanging over it led upwards. It looked like I was in someone's basement. A glass door to the side led out into a small garden area, flanked by a black wooden fence. It was early morning outside—in the garden white petunias were bobbing in grey earthen pots.

My ass shifted. Whatever I was sitting on crackled. I looked down.

Magazines I didn't recognize: a big white one called Lapham's Quarterly with a strawberry on the front, a thick orange journal with the words NEW THOUGHT in tiny yellow letters at the bottom. I tugged at the bottom of the pile and brought out a crumpled copy of National Geographic.

That cold wind blew back at my neck again. Something mechanical kicked inside the walls.

Who's room was this?

Maybe it was mine.

I chuckled. I leafed through the National Geo and saw a few high-res photos of a hummingbird.

I threw the magazine to the side.

Maybe it was my room.

Maybe I wasn't myself. Maybe I'd dreamt of Samuel J. Flautt, Level Zero, the Stalker Men.

I grinned.

A cold wind blew at my neck.

It was really cold. Painful.

I knew what cold meant.

I looked behind me.

The Stalker Man.

It hung on the ceiling, its double-joints compressed its spider-limbs in half. Its fingers and toes curled around the beams, but I think that it wouldn't fall even if it let go.

The Stalker Man's eyes stared, as always, right at me.

They were red now.

I didn't want to run; I didn't want to give it the satisfaction of fear. I wanted to turn away. I wanted to ignore it and make it meaningless.

But I knew its eyes would keep staring. So I stared back.

I thought it would be less freakish if it was smaller, but it wasn't: the folded arms and legs just brought it closer to a human shape. Disgusting. I hated it. I hated it in my gut with caveman fear of the deformed.

There was a little bit of regret: it was real, my life was still fucked up.

There was a bit of sadness.

Not a lot though. I was past sadness.

We are concluded.

The voice was a thought. It went into my head without the gurglings from the Stalker Man's gut.

I'd heard the thought-voice before, but had never known why it sometimes used that, or the forced intonations from its pervert-biology.

"Why are you talking to me now?" I asked. I forced my voice level. I couldn't show my revulsion at this thing that shouldn't exist in daylight.

The Stalker Man's shoulder's rotated. The joints clicked and slid like breaking bones. The eyes never stopped staring. Did they ever stop staring?

I do not speak to what is beneath me. I do not speak to dust. Now I speak to you.

"Dust?" I asked.

A white hand darted to the wall. A white foot smacked the ceiling. The Stalker Man soundlessly, and with that impossible speed, aligned itself like an arrow towards the gate.

Finally, the thing's head looked away.

_No longer_.

The Stalker Man reached down.

We are concluded?

A wave of dizziness passed over me. It started at the back of my neck, crawled over my scalp and cascaded down my face. It earthed itself in my guy. I stomached it. Static overwhelmed my eyes. I felt sick, and the crazy, meaningless question asked itself: how was I going to get back home?

Except I was home.

I was on the floor, leaning against my bed.

My room was as I'd left it last night. The customary mess of clothes, papers, and TEB flyers lay in a heap that was sure to fuse into sedimentary rock one of these days, my computers stuttered on my desk as they woke and went back to sleep, birdsong came from outside.

The sun was up. A beam of light lit the floating dust above my bed.

The coffee machine whirred in the kitchen. I heard Greg's footsteps pound down the living room. The front door creaked open and squealed shut. Greg forgot to turn the TV off—I heard Breakfast  
Television talking about banana milkshakes in Streetsville.

My mouth tasted like ass. The rest of me smelled pretty bad.

A horn honked outside. Traffic was always a bitch in the mornings.

My alarm clock spelled out the time in green. It was 7:42. My alarm hadn't gone off.

It was Monday morning. I was late for work.

#

You have 3 notifications.

I checked the HR office. Empty. I leaned back and took a long, careful look down the hallway. Empty. I rifled through my Gmail account for any business mail. Empty again.

I clicked the link to Facebook.

I had an hour to go before lunch, and most of the HR staff were giving tours to the fleet of interns that started today. The HR team had a new intern, a girl named Sally. Sarah wrote her name, and a task list, on the whiteboard with the rest of us. My name near the far left was spaced comfortably away from it.

The office was usually depressed on Mondays; no surprises there. The sound, the air, the environment all seemed weaponized. The phones rang too loud, the air ran too cold, and the unnatural light knocked our body-clocks into a circadian rhythm.

This Monday had the added joy of interns; I heard more laughter than I wanted, and a lot more mistakes: jammed copiers, calls for help, Gmail-beeps telling me so-and-so was late, so-and-so forgot to punch the time-clock.

Facebook popped up. It disappointed me right away; no interesting notifications. Thierry Reeves, an annoyance from university, had invited me to protest against some war criminal being held in Serbia; Lana Epcott had invited me to a Falun Gong meeting; and Rohit had liked a colourful comment I'd made about interns.

No messages from the Level Zero crowd.

I tried not to think about it.

I gripped my mouse and the plastic creaked.

"Enjoying that there Facebook Sam?" Henry's voice asked.

I jumped. The mouse popped out of its USB. The tower of my computer wobbled. Henry was so close I was surprised I hadn't smelled his Old Spice deodorant, or felt the threads of his TEB hoodie on the back of my head.

"No no, don't get up man." Henry said. He put a hand on my shoulder and eased me down.

"Sorry Henry," I said. "Lapse in judgement."

I plugged the mouse back into the USB and went to close the window. Henry stopped me.

"No no," Henry held out his hand. "Let's take a look. Let's check out the notifications, you've got any hot girls on your friends list?"

Not the time old man. I gritted my teeth. "Sorry. Won't happen again."

"I said it's no problem," Henry insisted so that I knew it was a massive problem. "Show me your friends list."

"That's—"

"Show me." Henry insisted.

I opened my friends list. I was grabbing the mouse again. I took a deep breath. I could keep calm.  
I could keep calm.

"Dude, you've got like, five girls!" Henry slapped me on the back. My knuckles whitened on the mouse.

I scrolled down the list, slowly. Henry took in every picture and every name. The humiliation was tangible.

"Yeah, click on her—Lena." Henry said.

I clicked on Lena's profile.

Lena's profile still hadn't been affected by the recent format change. I wonder how she'd managed that. Her profile picture showed her and Amrith with the faces photoshopped onto each other's bodies. It was creepy.

Lena's wall was pretty sparse. The comments came in days apart. The most recent comment came from two days ago.

Someone named Lori-lee had written: _where are you?_

Huh.

"You enjoy," Henry patted my back again. I heard his suddenly audible footsteps leave the room.

That was probably a pay reduction right there, but I didn't care.

_Where are you_?

For some reason, that bothered me.

I went over to Josh's profile. There was no activity there either—but, he only had 21 friends.

I searched Josh's friends list. Amrith and Laurent were both on there. I clicked on both their profiles.

Laurent's profile was blocked, but Amrith's wasn't. On his wall, someone called Juresh Bhattia had written: _dude answer ur phone_.

This was from two days ago.

I bounced my foot on the floor. I went back to Josh's profile—not thinking of Josh in the dreams I didn't forget. Josh with his stomach full of fire, spreading like a cancer, blackening skin.

Fuck. I bounced my leg harder.

Josh, in my dreams, burning. Dying.

But dying was what people did. They lived, they died. They were more like machines than anything else. People were, and then they weren't. They came, and then they went away. All the time.

People like Jonathan.

If I could make it right...

But I couldn't make it right.

The Stalker Man knew that much, I felt. The Stalker Man had seen that. Dust. He'd called me dust. I was dust. We were all dust that scattered in the wake of its red, red eyes.

Red eyes staring at me.

WHY HAD IT'S EYES CHANGED COLOUR?

I stepped outside the HR office. The TEB hallways with their flourescent lights and beige paint-job suddenly looked too much like a corporate Level Zero: the same room and same people repeated again and again in every direction. I had to get out.

I took the narrow, empty hallways by the interview rooms, and skirted over to the elevators. A group of three interns—two girls and a guy—were chatting next to the elevators, each holding folders, papers and official-looking crap. One of them was Gary Geare. He raised his hand to me as I walked past.

The elevator lobby was empty, but it was close enough to lunch that I could fake a trip down to the Mr. Greek at the bottom of the building. I just needed to get some fresh air.

I took the elevator down. No one joined me, and when the doors parted on the bottom floor I jammed my pass-card onto the turnstile and pounded for the closest exit.

It was hot outside; the sun was out and basted my forehead. I started sweating right away. I unbuttoned my shirt and threw it down.

Just needed fresh air, right?

I unhooked my belt and slipped it out of its links. I fed it into a trash can.

I'd paid seventy dollars for that belt, what the hell?

The TEB building exits into a little brick plaza that looks out onto Square One. A Wal-Mart greeted me as I walked further and further from the building. Traffic was steady on the street in front of me.

I flipped out my keys and looked around for the underground parking entrance.

Couldn't find it. Thinking some more, I realized it was probably only accessible from the elevators inside.

I wasn't going back inside.

I headed out in no direction at all. I just wanted to get out.

#

I'd chosen to perform some hyperventilation in a brick plaza near some restaurants.

There was a fountain in the middle of the plaza. Its bottom shone with rusted pennies.

I didn't want to return to work. Something told me that I'd passed the limit of strange shit there forever anyway. I'd ignored the three calls from my supervisor, and answering a fourth one would probably only get me chewed out. And even if I deserved some discipline for freaking out on company time, that didn't mean I'd walk into it.

The restaurants in the plaza were dead—two weren't even open, and the others had about two people in each.

The only store doing well in this little plaza was an Arab grocery store called Botros Mart. I'd tried calming down by going inside there to buy a snack; the store smelled of pot-pourri and flour. Everything seemed to be either made of dried fruit or dried fruit stuck inside fist-sized blocks of nougat.

So I sat on the edge of the fountain, smelling the chlorinated water and trying not to flinch from the drops of cold water pattering on my back. I held my head in my hands. I felt hot. It was too bright out.

And life sucked so much.

I had bad dreams that night

Not dreams where a Stalker Man hovered above me, but a bad  
dream.

I dreamt of Josh

And how I killed him.

#

"What are you doing with that Josh?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" He asked.

My eyes saw in black and white and grey. They saw squares of white dots, chequered out on a black sky. My ears heard static. Every sound came in distorted like someone had hit the world's whammy bar.

Except it was all so clear.

"The knife behind your back." I said. My voice echoed in the altered soundscape, and stretched like pulled harpstrings.

"What knife?" Josh asked. His voice was close. Right behind me.

"The knife you're holding out." I said. "The knife you're ready to—"

I leaped ahead. The edge of a knife prodded my back but didn't even break my clothes. I spun.

Josh, etched in black and grey, stood with the white, white knife out in something like a fighting stance.

"It got you," Josh said.

I flipped out my own knife. I don't know how I moved so fast.

Josh jumped forward. He swung the knife level with my throat. I jumped back. I turned and ran with the open blade against the pavement. The scriiiitch of metal on asphalt rang out in the  
silence. The light of a gate opened on the ground.

Except it was red.

"Fuck," Josh said at the gate.

A sound like falling rocks echoed from all around us.

"Sam stop," Josh said.

I felt hunger. But I felt strong. There was thunder in my chest. The emptiness. It felt good.

I ran at Josh.

"It's here!" Josh screamed.

My head was blank. There was just purpose and intent. I was movement abstracted from reason, like an equation relating the movement of a bullet. Didn't matter what I was doing, just mattered that I did.

I put out my foot. It hit Josh's side. The blow threw him to the side.

Josh was on his back, but he got up right away. I kicked him in the teeth.

"Oofh!" Josh recoiled. He cupped his mouth and blood seeped out. "Shhhchit." His voice was slurred.

I sat on his chest, and grabbed his collar.

"Oh crap." Josh moaned. "Oh crap."

Red light everywhere.

I didn't remember this dream when I woke up.

CHAPTER TWELVE: DISAPPEARANCE

I rang the doorbell, and heard a three-tone ding-ding-dong on the other side of the door.

The sun baked the back of my neck. For the past two days the hot weather had continued. It was making my rounds around the city difficult. I'd cranked up the AC in my car, but it didn't help.

I hadn't been to work in two days. I hadn't called them in two days. Whatever, I could look for better work later. Just now I had work to do.

I didn't know much about the Level Zero crowd; I didn't know where they lived, where they went, or even what they'd eat at McDonald's. This made it difficult to find out what had happened to them.

But I had one memory: Lena Arshun's house. I remembered what it looked like as they'd led me, handcuffed, out of it on that first rainy night when things went fucked up.

After scouring my apartment's floor yesterday I'd located an old couple who still owned a phonebook. I'd wrote down all twenty-five addresses for Arshun in the Toronto area. This address was number twenty-three.

No one answered the door. I looked around.

The house was normal-looking for the neighborhood, a bunch of small, semi-detached, red-brick tenements. It had a balcony, a narrow driveway, and roses blooming along the lawn. It looked like it belonged to someone's grandmother.

The lawn of this house was browning. I saw an old sprinkler disconnected from a nearby green garden hose running through the brittle grass. The roses' petals were limp and brown.

Aside from the sunburn, this house was exactly as I remembered it from my first night in Level Zero.

This was the house I'd arrived at when I first met Josh and Laurent down there.

The door still didn't open. I resisted the urge to scratch away the flaking white paint.

I rang the doorbell again. Lena's parents, if they lived here, were probably at work.

I heard footsteps.

A click in the lock.

"Hello?" A woman's voice asked.

At the door stood an old woman. She had graying hair cut short like Justin Beiber and wore a huge white tank-top and men's cargo shorts. She didn't look like she'd throw me out.

"Hi," I said. "I'm a friend of Lena's."

The woman's face sagged. She looked old now: the lines of her mouth deepened, and drew dark patterns around her eyes. She placed her hand on the doorframe and her posture subtly shifted so that she relied on it for weight. Her body language was clear; I'd obviously upset her.

Awesome.

"This is her home?" I asked.

"Yes." The woman said. "Yes, I'm Debbie. I'm Lena's Grandmother."

I couldn't grin, not with this person in front of me looking at me for all the world like I was going to tell her something terrible.

But she remembered Lena. She hadn't just vanished.

"Are you from the police?" She asked. She pointed at my clothes—business casual for good first impressions. "They said they'd send someone."

"No Debbie," I said. Had to say her name, had to look in her eyes, had to look trustworthy so she'd tell me everything.

"I'm a friend." I repeated. "I've been trying touch with her, but I can't find her, or any of her other friends. I finally figured..."

Sound natural, sound like a good guy. "... Well, that I'd just come down and check out what was going on."

"Lena's been missing." Debbie sighed. Her voice wheezed like a squeezing sponge. "So's her boyfriend. We're worried something happened to both of them."

Debbie's shoulder's shook. She wrapped her hands around her sides.

"Uh, uh, can I come in?" I asked.

Debbie made a small noise at the back of her throat. She nodded, and held the door open for me.

The house was exactly as I remembered: it even smelled of the same pot-pourri. Same blue carpets, pictures of boats, family, china figures and doilies.

"Rachel and Arman are both at work," Debbie said as I entered. "I'm at home all day so I've been waiting for news from the police."

She closed the door behind me. "And there've been other people coming to look for Lena."

"What happened?" I asked her.

Debbie wandered past me and into another room. She didn't look at me.

I went to follow her and bumped into a side table.

There was a card on top of the table. The card was emblazoned with the crest for... was that Ryerson?

I picked up the card. It was the Ryerson crest. The name on the card read: _Daniel Thornton, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ryerson University_.

I slipped the card into my pocket.

I joined Debbie in the other room. The lights were off and the light from outside was just enough to keep me from tripping over something. Debbie sat on a floral-patterned sofa like the one I remembered from the basement. I sat on the one facing it. It gushed vanilla scent.

"Lena wasn't here one morning," Debbie said. "We think she went out to see Amrith, but when she didn't come back..."

She shuddered. I tapped my foot. Come on old woman, I didn't have all day.

"Amrith wasn't there," She said, her voice high and scratchy. "She wasn't there. We don't know what happened to them. And we called the police and—"

Debbie cut off. She was breathing heavily like she was about to go into a fit.

"Has anyone else come looking for her?" I asked, thinking for some reason about the card.

"And of her other friends?" I continued. "Any... men?"

Long hair, poor diet, no fashion sense. If I was right...

"No friends. Just you and—there was a man," Debbie choked out. "He was so strange. Fat, with a big beard and dressed all in tweed and—"

Bingo.

"Hairy knuckles?" I asked.

"Maybe," Debbie sniffed. She reached beside her for a box of Puffs tissue with a picture of kittens on it.

"Spotty hands? Sort of a—a loudmouth?" I asked.

"He was very forward." Debbie said to the tissue. She dabbed her eyes and nose with it.

"And what was this man's name?"

"I don't remember. He left his card." Debbie tucked the tissue into her sleeve and wiped a drop from her nose. Thank goodness she was too grief-stricken to care about my questions. "I don't know."

I got out of there as fast as I could, but politely in case I needed something from Debbie later. I made up some story about knowing Lena from school and just being concerned on behalf of the Prime Minister or some bullshit I forgot as soon as I headed out the driveway.

Daniel Thornton, I read again on the card as I drove back to my apartment and to the phonebook that could tell me where he lived.

It looked like one member of the Level Zero crowd hadn't disappeared.

#

It was nearly sundown by the time I turned off of Bloor street looking for Daniel Thornton's home.

The heat hadn't let up, and I had my AC up all the way so that cold air blasted on my neck like the cold breath of a stalker man.

Professor Daniel Thornton, of course he was a professor—only an educator could be as obnoxious as he was, lived in Mississauga where Bloor street began. There was a school nearby, and one or two apartment buildings. For the most part it was ranch-style houses though, with sprinklers and flower gardens and one or two tasteless lawn ornaments. I even saw a pink flamingo-thing on the way over.

Well, he was an associate professor—probably couldn't afford more.

I turned onto McCall Drive; the houses suddenly turned a lot more trashy. The sidewalks turned to gravel sides, the driveways became narrow strips of asphalt cutting across unmowed lawns.

Two kids rode by on bicycles. They were wearing purple hoodies that I'm sure they thought were cool.

Thornton's address was 344 McCall. I was at 232.

I swerved away from a white boat someone had parked beside their house and ground up against the gravel shoulder. A wave of dust kicked up and rocks tapped the bottom of my car.

I didn't know what I'd say to Thornton when I found him. It could be that he knew as little as I did about the disappearance of Lena and the others.

But he didn't know about the red eyes, and about Josh.

I'd probably ask him more about the Stalker Men first.

Maybe I'd ask him why the hell a PHD in Metaphysics called himself "Haze."

The numbers rolled up to 340, 342, and finally 344.

344 sat on the curb of McCall and another street called Chatham. It was probably the best of the houses on this street; it had a hedge on the curb side, and the grass was green and only partially blanketed with weeds and dandelions. A wilting mulberry tree slumped beside the hedge, and the grass was stained purple around it.

The driveway was empty. The front door was open, revealing a closed screen door.

I pulled in. The car grumbled to a halt.

The house was quiet. No lights on. No sign of movement inside.

I got out of my car and shut the door. I flinched at the noise.

I took a few steps through the lawn. The long, dry grass tore as I walked through it. As I got closer, the house didn't give any indication of life.

I pulled out the card. I checked the address again. The number was correct, and Google Maps couldn't have lied to me.

Had Haze vanished too? I bit my lip at the thought.

I went up to the door and rang the bell.

"Haze!" I called. "Haze are you in there!?"

I could see a bare hallway through the screen door. No people.

"Haze!" I called. "Daniel!... Professor Thornton!"

No response, no sound. My voice sank into the house like water on dry earth.

The entire street was quiet. There weren't even summer crickets chirping their fuck-songs.

Without thinking, I pushed at the screen door.

It swung open. A long creak whined out the rusted joints, ending in a deep, long groan.

Well that was creepy.

"Haze?" I called again.

It was too dark to see inside. I went to use the flashlight app on my cell phone, but remembered I didn't own a phone anymore. That fucking Santa.

I took a careful step inside. The wood creaked under my foot.

Nothing stepped out to eat me. I took another step inside. I held my hands to the wall for balance and took yet another step. Dust came off on my fingers.

The darkness swelled like a physical presence. I edged forward. I hoped that Haze didn't fill his house with bear-traps or something.

This house smelled odd; not bad, but not normal. It didn't smell like indoors, or all the domestic hallmarks that made a space livable. No Febreeze, no fading odour of food, no vacuum-cleaned carpet. For the most part it smelled like the air outside, except with an acrid undercurrent, like rot.

Why did Haze keep his house like this?

My fingers found a light switch. I flicked it on. A bare bulb flashed above me. Light burst into the hallway, illuminating the entire thing.

The light stuttered. It flickered over flaking paint, sagging plaster, and cracked drywall.

My stomach tightened. This wasn't normal.

This house was a ruin.

I took my hand away from the wall. I saw graffiti over it in black magic-marker. The graffiti said something about Donnie P being awesome and Brittney J being a slut. A lot more of it was just drawings of symbols and stick-figures, like paleographs.

The entire hallway was wrecked: a long fissure ran up one wall, revealing the junctures in the drywall. The wooden floor was flecked with dirt and chipped. Dust and crap lined the walls and a torn table leg jutted out the nearest doorway.

Who'd put a house like this on a business card?

Homeless guy. Eccentric guy. Crazy guy. My head reeled through a string of words. It finally settled on one that left a sour taste in my mouth.

Liar.

I was about to go ahead when I stopped. There was something just ahead of me.

I bent down to look. Buried beneath the dust was a line of debris, running from one side of the hallway to the other. I brushed away the dust. The stuff beneath glimmered.

Broken glass.

I shivered. The trap was obvious, but its presence unnerved me. Was it to keep out dogs and raccoons? Or was it a warning?

I stepped over the line of glass. The hallway branched off here into a kitchen and a living room.

The kitchen was smashed up: broken cupboards, cracked island, and a black stain that looked like ash. Against all reason someone had lit a campfire here long ago. The living room was empty: pilfered of anything useful. The window in the living room was cracked open. Warm air wafted through it.

I saw a door in the living room. Wary for broken glass, exposed nails, or bare wiring, I stalked across the carpet.

The carpet beneath the door had an arc drawn across it in dust. Someone had been here recently.

I turned the doorknob slowly. There wasn't any dust on it. The bolt unlocked inside, and I tugged the door open.

It revealed a narrow stairwell leading down After the third step, the stairway vanished into darkness.

Cold air floated from up the stairs.

I felt for a switch on the walls but couldn't find anything. I gave up and descended into the dark.

The air smelled cold and dank here, as if it was the source of some rot. After the heat from outside, the temperature felt unnatural.

There was a light down there...

I eased my way down the stairs. Nothing came after me; Haze didn't jump out with a gun like a B-Movie villain. I got the feeling that if anything came to scare me here, it'd be the more subtle kind of scary.

Just a feeling.

I came to the end of the staircase. I felt at the bottom, and broken glass tinkled. So, there was more. I swept it away with my foot, creating more noise than I wanted to make in this quiet place.

And stepped onto the floor.

The floor felt like rock. My fingers brushed the walls and they felt like unfinished drywall. I finally found a switch and flicked it on.

The lights came on.

I remembered this room.

I stepped forward. Grass crunched beneath my feet.

This basement was small, dirty and unfinished. Orange spray-paint marked the walls, and a yellow futon with the stuffing coming out extended from the wall. Cobwebs waved from the wooden rafters.

There was a stained coffee table with a lime-green Gameboy Colour. A pile of magazines sprawled underneath the table.

Red light flared from the wall, near the head of the futon. I blinked, but wasn't really surprised.

The red gate.

I'd been here two days ago, after awakening from the stalker man's bad dream.

What did this mean?

I sat on the sofa, surveying the gate for any changes or irregularities. I didn't notice any. I was probably too stupid to tell.

The red gate broke several rules: it appeared by itself, without a knife imbued with the alpha-gate's awesome sauce. It didn't flicker off, like other gates did. It didn't hum, like other gates did.

A gust blew through the house upstairs. Wood creaked. Something crashed to the floor. Maybe some raccoons had snuck inside. I didn't pay attention.

The colour of the gate was the most disturbing thing of all. The carmine glow was tuned too close to blood. The regular gates and their sterile blue were comforting compared to this.

What was wrong with these gates that they'd turned red?

I bunched my shirt for warmth and wished I'd brought a sweater.

Maybe the problem wasn't the gate.

Maybe, since the stalker man had sent me to Level Zero, I was just seeing things differently.

Another porcelain crack came from upstairs. But there wasn't any wind now.

I wondered suddenly why the front door had been unlocked.

"Thought you'd come back here."

#

Haze.

He stood at the edge of the light. His right hand held a flashlight. His left hand grasped a fucking butterfly knife.

A butterfly knife is a type of folding knife native to the Philippines. The blade is normally lodged between two pieces of wood that can be pulled apart. The wood becomes the handle and the blade becomes the thing you kill things with. Butterfly knives aren't made to be concealed like pocket knives or switchblades. They're full-on combat gear.

Haze's weapon was the length of a steak-knife. The grey steel was flecked with brown rust. But even though it didn't look well-kept, it looked sharp enough to kill something.

The old man looked tired now. His beard was dirtier. His flat-ironed hair ran into knots. He'd lost weight; sharp edges protruded out of his pudgy face. He looked like he hadn't eaten since I saw him two weeks ago.

"Daniel," I said. My voice came out smooth and level. Fear was taking over. It was leaching out my feelings, turning the world into smooth angles and trajectories. I started gauging Haze's reach, the force it would take to pierce my skin and whether or not an associate philosophy professor could generate that force.

"Shut up," Haze said. He waved the butterfly knife. It was a stupid gesture but the knife was sharp enough to make it scary.

"What are you doing?" I asked. "I came to talk to you. Where is everyone?"

Haze curled his lips. The knife trembled in his hand.

"What's with these red gates?" I asked.

Haze turned on the flashlight. Bright yellow light blasted out of it. He held the flashlight level at the red gate.

"It looks blue to me," Haze announced. "So do your eyes."

"What?"

"They're glowing like Christmas lights," he observed.

That wasn't true.

Haze entered the light. The flashlight stayed level with the gate. What was he doing with that?

"You killed Josh," Haze said.

"Not my choice," I said.

"I know," Haze said. His fingers whitened on the knife handle.

Needed a weapon. Needed a way to block the knife, hurt Haze, and get out. If he swung I smack it aside and smash his knees.

"I." Haze tensed. His knees locked into a sprinter's bent. His shoulders stiffened. "Know!"

Haze darted past me. The knife went up and I thought he'd stab me. He tackled me instead. His shoulder caught me in the solar plexus and drove the air out of my chest. Something crunched inside me.

I flew back onto the sofa. The edge of it dug into my kidneys. My head flew back.  
Haze charged at the gate. He vanished through it.

I rolled onto the floor, doubled over. I choked on the pain. I closed my eyes and stars wheeled beneath my eyelids.

Pain roiled through my gut. My heart felt full to bursting. My stomach heaved and I gulped down. I got shakily to my feet.

Whatever Haze was doing, I needed to find out.

I lurched into the gate.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: STALKER MAN

"AAGH!"

The scream came so fast I thought it was mine. But then my feet touched down on the smooth floors of Level Zero, and I realized it was Haze's voice.

"Haze?" I shouted. My voice blared surround-sound out of every corner.

Haze screamed again. I heard it like I'd heard my own voice; it raked the empty rooms of Level Zero, gurgling and wheezing and fading out. It was noise without a purpose, no hope, no meaning, just a cry. It sent a chill inside my gut.

I looked around: Level Zero was normal today; three lights like fireflies chased each other in the corner of this room. Their lights lapped like waves at the empty doorways, leading forever into endless repetition.

I waited for a voice, a scream, even the rumble of a stalker man, but nothing came. I cocked my head. I smelled the fried-tin air. Nothing told me where Haze was.

The gate glowed supernova red behind me.

I leaned out the leftmost doorway. The room it led to was dark—no floating lights, no gates.

I wondered, if I got lost here, what would happen?

I didn't care at the moment. I was too pissed off that my investigation had landed me again in Level Zero.

I looked out the middle doorway. Still nothing. I might have no choice but to go back anyway, that or wander indefinitely in the gloom. And Haze said my eyes were glowing—so I'd look just like a stalker man, from a distance.

Doors number one and two were empty. I checked doorway number three.

The room it led to was blank as well.

Wait.

Something like rusty neon flickered in the middle of this room.

I walked towards it and the gate's red glow dimmed behind me. This light didn't look normal. It didn't fly. It didn't move. It wasn't a neat, geometric shape either, it was a crescent smear on the ground.

It looked a bit like a liquid, glowing under blacklight.

I touched the smear. It came off on my finger and painted the ridges of my skin in light.

It smelled like copper.

#

" _I don't believe it," I said._

Endless hallways, filled with light.

" _Dan never believes you," Arnold joked to Gary._

Black walls the temperature of blood. Energy humming beneath my feet.

" _Asshole," I muttered._

No people. No noise.

Just me.

" _Are you okay Daniel?" Gary asked._

For the first time since they'd taken me through the Alpha Gate, I looked back at Gary, Arnold and Terry.

Terry and Arnold reclined against the walls, trying to be cool in a place antithetical to everything we'd been taught. Around their waists looped velcro belts loaded with food, water and flashlights. They wore survival gear, as if this place was dangerous. I wondered briefly why Gary had shown this place to them first. They obviously didn't understand what this was.

It didn't matter. He'd shown me now.

Gary Weiss stood apart from all of us, lit from behind by a flurry of yellow lights that swarmed us fireflies. He was dressed in his business-casual alone seemed to know what we stood in. He knew this place was sacred.

" _It's beautiful." I whispered._

#

I struggled to retain the sounds and images, already sinking from my consciousness. But the false memory was fading like a dream.

That was Haze's memory. When he'd first been taken to Level Zero.

I rubbed my fingers together and the glowing liquid painted the lines of my fingers. It was blood. Haze had probably cut himself with his knife, or maybe I'd broken something when I elbowed his nose.

"What are you doing here Haze?" I asked myself. Once again, my voice sounded different now, coming from all directions and all the doorways. I had a brief vision of four clones of me, standing at the four doorways, repeating everything I said in unision. Of course that was stupid, there was only one of me.

But people were all so interchangeable anyway...

I wiped the blood on my pants where it glowed neon. I stared at the puddle in the middle of the room for a while.

I got an idea of how to find Haze.

I scooped up the rest of the blood. I cringed a bit; it was sticky, and lukewarm like the walls of Level Zero. Hopefully handling the blood would be the worst part, and Haze didn't have any diseases that I could somehow get from using his blood as paint.

I dabbed the middle of the room with a thumprint. It glowed oil-spill light, subtly, gently changing from red to purple to sickening green.

I headed down the rooms. I marked the middle of each one with a glowing thumbprint. This way I could keep track of where I went.

At first I moved in circles around the room I found the blood in. The pattern was similar to how I'd moved when I first came to Level Zero.

After I completed three circles around the blood-room, I found something.

A fleck of blood.

It was just a spot near the doorway, shining first highlighter-yellow then turning to a dark, rotten orange. It balanced against gravity into a perfect sphere. The imperfection on Level Zero's perfect smoothness was a bit jarring.

I reached out.

#

" _What the hell is that?" Arnold screamed._

" _Relax," I said. "It's a stalker man."_

The blue lights wavered down the long hallway. I held my breath.

Arnold stood silently next to me. I crouched down. My skin flashed hot and cold. My lungs burned. I couldn't breath if I wanted to.

They blinked, turned, and continued on.

Thank God. I breathed out.

" _That was close." I said._

" _Dan will you please fill me in on what the hell that was?" Arnold whispered._

" _It's a stalker man," I repeated, uncomfortable of the half-truth. "They... they live down here."_

" _What?" Arnold asked._

" _Yep," I said. He had to believe it. The truth was too strange, and I could fix this before it spread._

I could definitely save Gary.

#

I bit my cheek. The pain forced me back into the present time and my present self.

Another vision of a past that didn't belong to me. But I had to remember this time. I had to remember.

Lies. Death. Something slinking through the rooms of Level Zero. What was Level Zero and why did it have these stalker men? Junk data? What a load of crap—the world wasn't a computer program, at least not how Josh thought it was.

But my thoughts faded into the background and dried up to nothing.

I dabbed at the drop of blood.

I walked in a new set of circles that spiralled around the second blood-room. It took me five repetitions to find a new room that had Haze's glowing blood inside it. The blood was three streaks smudged along the wall, like Haze had propped himself up there.

I hadn't heard anything else from Haze.

I touched the new streaks of blood, and when the vision came I was ready for them.

#

" _You'll need to be careful," I said._

Lena and Amrith strapped the belts on. Flashlights, food, water. The gear was more for their psychological well-being than anything else; Level Zero didn't make you hungry, technically you didn't even breath the air inside it.

" _Shouldn't be a problem," Amrith said. "You showed us everything."_

" _We have the cloaking rings," Lena said. She smiled and flicked the gold rings dangling from her ear._

I sat cross-legged in front of the gate. It was the first stable one I'd opened since the dreams started.

The gate glowed up the wall of my basement. I'd developed a way to seal the gates from inside Level Zero. It would keep out unwanted visitors, and let me do my research in peace.

Laurent and Josh bent over a thin black netbook at the corner of the room. Laurent had hooked something up to monitor wireless communications inside Level Zero. Amrith and Lena both carried walkie-talkies on their belts.

They didn't carry markers, tape, or anything that could reveal their location. I was pretty sure that the stalker men could read information from anything we left behind there.

Josh and Laurent had led me to Lena and Amrith: I was worried about them. They were fast, they'd been doing backflips off a wall when Laurent introduced them to me at the Ryerson cafeteria. But they needed to be careful.

I looked over at Josh and Laurent, still kneeling over the laptop, talking technology to each other. It was a good choice to get them in on this. I had my misgivings about using people, but I had to use these kids to map Level Zero. Otherwise it'd keep on spreading.

" _Time to go in," Laurent announced. Amrith and Lena looked at each other nervously. Lena grinned._

My stomach tightened.

I wasn't afraid of Arnold or Terry. All they could do was run and look creepy.

But Gary was still down there.

#

The vision faded. I wrestled in my mind to keep it; aside from the vision itself, there was subtext there—background date not stated but known.

Haze knew what Level Zero was.

And I now thought that the stalker men were anything but natural.

"No..."

My ears pricked. Haze's voice again. It gurgled out the walls, sickeningly low.

There was a tone to Haze's voice that I couldn't place, like he'd lost a battle he'd fought for ages, or like he'd dropped halfway through a long, long road. It was a type of despair tempered by time and hope and determination, wrapped in what could have been.

I made more circles around that room.

What was Level Zero?

This was what Haze thought:

Level Zero wasn't a place. It was a thing. a living alien operating out of a different level of existence than ours. It was a creature that slunk in a strange, formless void. Its tendrils gripped below into the world of space and matter, but also reached above and between.

It lived between time, and the world of force and projection. It was an abomination of physics: the one true glitch that spat in the rules and lived in the world between abstraction and material. It was this that let the Level Zero crowd use their crazy powers.

But for all of its strangeness, Level Zero was alive. Living things hungered. And the stalker men were how it ate.

I did another circle. I found another drop of blood a few rooms down. I touched the blood and raw information went like an electric shock directly to my brain.

Haze had tried to destroy Level Zero.

He'd convinced Lena, Laurent, Amrith and Josh that it could be something fun. He'd used Josh's greed and Laurent's curiosity and Amrith and Lena's aimless, nerdy sense of play. He'd tried to use them to map Level Zero and find the mythical Alias to cure the stalker men and kill Level Zero.

The data streaming through my head clouded my vision. My head whirled. My skin prickled. A jolt ran up my back and a single, clear image rose from the blood.

It was of myself, with glowing blue eyes, standing in Haze's basement.

I'd come for him. I'd come for all of them but only Haze had escaped.

"No... Please stop."

The voice was a murmur. Unlike before, it was quiet, and I could tell it came from a few rooms away.

I took a left into the next room, turned, and stopped.

Three rooms down, surrounded by a ring of red lights, Haze knelt, streaked with psychedelic blood.

I came closer.

Laurent, Lena and Amrith stood over Haze. Their eyes glowed red, so red it was like their bodies were filled with light. Their eyes washed out the shadows of their faces, bleaching their features uniform. Their skin looked pale in the new light, and drawn back.

I slowly entered the room.

"Going to make me one of them?" He asked.

"No," Amrith said.

"We are not above hate." Lena said.

"We can hate very, very well." Laurent added.

Haze's body shuttered in place. His skin roiled like a dust cloud.

And then, his body dissolved.

It started from the floor, trickling out in thin streams that began filled with the colour of their source, but faded to grey as they poured into the corners of the room. Slowly, Haze's legs disappeared

"Fuck." Haze groaned.

Haze's chest fell inward like a ruined sand castle. He threw his head, screamed, and his face collapsed into ash as I stared.

For the third time, I watched a man die. This time I felt nothing.

Good.

The dust that Haze had been swept across the room, growing less and less. Amrith, Lena and Laurent said nothing.

I could remember now—memories of tracking them down, pushing them into the gates and calmly erasing any data I could of their existence.

Around us, Level Zero hummed. Its rooms all alike, its permanence tunnelling through a world of dust and dirt and death. There was work to do.

People died. They didn't need to.

Darkness was coming. It didn't have to.

The world was running down, the energy we'd siphoned off the big bang was coming inexorably to a halt, and the earth was collapsing even faster.

We had to make the world join us. We had to save it from itself. There was a price of course. But what was that to eternity?

This was heaven after all. And we were angels.

A red light flickered somewhere down the halls. I could see farther now, and I could recognize the shape, even from so far away.

It was Josh.

I raised my hand to him.

Down the endless hallways, Josh turned to me. His eyes glowed red now, like firework sparks. He stared for a while, a ghost in an endless dream.

I wondered what we would say if we were close enough to talk. I wondered if there would be talk from now on. It seemed not. It seemed like we would all walk apart from each other, forever. Perhaps our paths would overlap, perhaps we'd run parallel to each other, but actually stopping to come together? Never. I knew this without thinking.

Not so different from the outside then.

Josh turned away, and kept on walking.
