Glitch. Part 34

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 p.r.i.c.kled. 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 bas.e.m.e.nt.

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 "f.u.c.k." 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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.

end.