by Ben Farthing
"Toss him in," said the CEO, walking past. He paused to look down at Everard. "I'll answer your questions later. We'll be getting to know each other quite well."
The silver-haired old man left Everard with Bowman, the wall sliding shut behind him.
Bowman kicked Everard in the gut, although the blow lost its strength somewhere in the fifth or six layer of chain.
"This is more than you deserve," said Bowman. He strained to half roll, half slide Everard toward the elevator. "Once I'm promoted, my first order of business will be retiring your body."
"The hell are you talking about?" The barrel of the pistol against his chest, Everard tried to maneuver himself so it aimed at Bowman. He pulled the trigger. The muffled cacophony missed Bowman, smashing the glass in front of one of the suits. It punched a hole in the chains, too narrow to free him.
Bowman raised his foot to stomp on Everard's jaw, but then thought better of it. Whatever they were planning on doing to him, apparently they wanted his body whole.
As Bowman forced Everard to the elevator, this time keeping the pistol pointed away from him, Everard got a clear look through the remaining windows. Each revealed a paralyzed man, every one white, fit, and handsome. Those that opened their eyes looked around frantically.
"What's in there?" asked Everard as they neared the elevator.
"You'll see," said Bowman.
He should have ran while he had the chance. Well, whether he really had the chance or not, he should have ran. Should have left the Mariner's Box in the stairwell and left. But thanks to his stubbornness, here he was.
With another shove from Bowman's foot, Everard slid the final few inches into the elevator, the chains scratching the floor.
The elevator doors closed.
Everard struggled against the chains. He pulled the trigger again, breaking a few more links. But while the blast shattered the chain, it didn't even scratch the elevator walls.
Another ding, and the elevator started upwards.
Sweat dampened his shirt. He fired again, wriggled his shoulders. Another two shots and he pulled his arms free.
The lights flickered.
He tried to yank his lower body free, but the chains were too taught, and their weight was too much. His shirt stuck to his skin, now soaked with sweat. This elevator was like a quick-heating oven.
Again, the lights flashed, a slow, irregular pattern. In each moment of darkness, the elevator disappeared, leaving Everard floating in a violet-tinged void.
He thought of the tunnel underground between the Amphitheater and the Junk Shoals, where something breathed inside a wall too small to possibly hold it. They'd explained there were nooks beyond the Periphery, where the NSA forced prisoners to explore. Everard was pretty sure he was staring at one of those nooks now.
Aiming carefully, he blasted through enough chain to get free and stand up.
Movement at the edge of his vision. He whirled to face it, raising the flintlock.
The lights came back on, restoring the walls of the elevator.
A single button made up the controls, and it wasn't marked. Everard jammed at it, but nothing happened.
Darkness. In the distance, something massive stirred, a flowing wrinkle of shadow stretching out to either edge of his vision, yet still impossibly far away.
The lights returned. Everard couldn't fathom what was out there, or how big it was. He did know that he wanted to get out of this elevator. In the movies, people trapped in elevators always removed a ceiling tile, but this ceiling was a single, solid piece of drywall.
He jammed his fingers between the doors, but they didn't budge.
Everything went black, and the approaching nightmare had halved the distance between it and Everard. It's obscure bulk rolled towards him in erratic jerks, dragging itself through the emptiness with invisible limbs.
For all his effort, Everard couldn't focus his eyes on it. It was part of this non-space, but a different shade of nothing. It stretched in all directions as far as he could see, but whenever he tried to look at single spot, there was nothing.
The lights didn't come back. Everard was trapped on an invisible floor floor, suspended in emptiness. He stomped, felt the marble floor under his boots. He kicked down with his heel, harder and harder until he broke off a piece of marble, then crouched to pick it up. He had to feel around for it, but once he held it it became visible. Some part of him was still in the elevator. Maybe that meant he could still escape.
He stood, aimed the flintlock at the floor, and collapsed as the approaching presence forced images, sounds, smells, into his head. They were of him, but through a perception totally alien. He saw his body in a different color scale, impossible colors he'd never seen before, that made him nauseous trying to comprehend. But it was still him. A million versions of him, different, conflicting possibilities, but each surprisingly happy. Marrying Abby and having a houseful of children. Running for office. Growing his business. Starting a charity with Liz. Glimpses into these possibilities, brief images overshadowed by the emotion that came with them. Contentment. Peace. Accomplishment.
But behind all this, a deeper anticipation, vile and overpowering, seeping through every imagining.
Everard's head throbbed.
Although he pressed his forehead to the invisible tile and squeezed his eyes shut, he felt the thing consume the elevator. The elevator swayed like it'd been hit with a tidal wave. While the walls stayed invisible, steel creaked as it stretched and bent.
The positive images of the future abruptly vanished.
A vision invaded his mind, of his consciousness—everything that made Everard who he was—being crushed, squeezed into a tiny corner of his self, making way for a wisp of avarice smaller than the horror surrounding him, some peon to it.
A finely tailored suit appeared on his body, heavier than chains.
The million possibilities for his life shattered, cast aside to make way for a wicked consciousness that wanted a host. Its god wept with the joy of the wasted lives.
A burst of alien orgasmic pleasure invaded Everard's mind. He vomited, hot bile splashing over his hands.
The suit wasn't on him yet; only the implanted vision of it. Everard rose to his knees, struggling to control his body from the tiny portion of his self that he still occupied. All trapped inside an empty cube assaulted by a dense mass of writhing, impossible flesh. Shaking with the effort, he pulled the trigger.
A ray burst through the attacker, ripped a hole that left fluttering flaps of absence.
The thing squeezed tighter. The floor buckled under Everard's feet. Marble cracked.
The blow hadn't harmed this nightmare. Everard had the distinct impression that its physical size was unnecessary, an infinite addition to an incomprehensible, otherworldy existence. Shooting it wouldn't do shit.
Time had to be up by now. He couldn't remember what he was keeping time for, not against the buffeting of injected thoughts, the possibilities of his future strewn aside to make way for enslavement. But he knew he was counting down to something, and he knew he should find something to hang onto.
Everard dropped to his stomach, found the missing chunk of floor. It wasn't much, but it was the only spot to brace himself. He grabbed the edge with a grip made strong from holding jigsaws steady and loosening stubborn screws.
He waited. His self was diminutive, suspended miles between the edges of his mind. The thing ripped away each possible accomplishment from his future, cast them aside to drift and dissipate in the space claimed neither by the Periphery or the Central Nook.
The building lurched. The horror assaulting him jerked in pain, its empty corridor shoved aside by shifting space.
Its howled thoughts and emotions stuttered. Memories exploded back out to fill Everard's mind.
He remembered exactly why he needed to hold on, and he cursed as he realized ignorance may have been the only thing shielding him from complete panic. The elevator lurched again. The lights flashed back on, only fo
r the bulbs to pop and fizzle as some powerbox somewhere crumpled and snapped.
The key on the Mariner's Box had wound down. The CEO's guess had been close; Bermuda had forged the box from the possessions of old ship captains and explorers. But it was from compass needles, not cannonballs. Bermuda had found the compasses of explorers like Columbus, Magellan, and Drake. He'd found the compass used by Christopher Jones to sail the Mayflower, and the one used by Christopher Newport to sail to what would become Jamestown.
Bermuda would have gone on listing names Everard didn't recognize if he hadn't cut him off. Compass needles were tiny. There had to be a thousand in that box.
And through whatever bent Bermuda possessed, he'd charmed the Mariner's Box. When its clockwork interior wound down, everything close to the box would experience what it was like to be a compass needle, pulled inexorably toward magnetic north. Only now, Bermuda had taken that attraction and magnified it exponentially. More than Everard had realized, as much as the building was moving. And Everard was right in the middle of it.
The darkness of the alien nook replaced the darkness of the busted light bulbs. The fury of the gargantuan horror washed over Everard as the Mariner's Box ripped away the thing's grip on Everard and the elevator. And then silence.
His head ached and his stomach still rolled, but he was in control of himself. Everard wiped his hands on his pants. He pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight. The walls were cracked and crumpled, like a balled up and then smoothed out piece of paper.
The building creaked and moaned around him.
He jammed the button to open the doors but nothing happened. Everard tried to avoid thinking about the top floors jerked off the top of the building, then crumbling as they fell, his body being dashed on the ground and then crushed by falling debris.
Of course, the quick drop made that difficult.
Everything fell for a brief second, and then Everard smashed into the floor, losing his breath. He gasped for air.
Everard waited for the elevator to disappear again, for nothingness and its largest denizen to rip apart his mind, or to feel another rumble and then plummet sixty stories to the ground.
After a few seconds of not dying, Everard crawled to the doors.
His head throbbed, his stomach was a knot, his lungs ached, and nausea still hung on.
Although it was all worth it, knowing what he'd just done to Inc.
Now if he could get out of here alive, that'd be the cherry to top it off.
The doors wouldn't budge.
The elevator shifted, tossing him against the far wall, leaving the floor at an angle. The movement left a slight crack between the doors. Everard climbed up the sloped floor, squeezed his fingers inside, and pulled. Nothing.
He stepped back to aim the flintlock at the edge of the door. He fired, and the door inched closer to open. Whatever they'd used to reinforce the walls in here, they hadn't used on the door's runners. With a few more shots, he forced the door open enough to push himself through.
It looked like an earthquake had hit the building. Lines of dusty sunlight shone through splits in the walls and ceilings. Three-foot wide cracks in the floor divided the room.
Everard stepped carefully across the floor, testing each spot before putting his weight down. All the glass that had shielded the suits and the paralyzed men now lay shattered. The first two men were dead - one crushed by shifting walls, another gone, along with the floor of his cell. Everard peered down through the hole. His stomach leapt to his throat.
He could see sixty floors down to the city below. He was directly over the neighboring block, staring at the smaller buildings, scurrying pedestrians, and constant flow of cars.
Haphazard scaffolding of steel beams held the top floors up like the legs of a giant mechanical spider. Or maybe it was better to say a giant mechanical millipede, since there were hundreds and hundreds of supports, even more than seemed necessary.
The CEO and his lackeys must have made the supports appear in the same way he'd made the deadbolts appear. Everard wondered how much cash they had to burn for this trick.
Keeping his sight on the door to avoid looking down through the cracks, Everard kept on across the room. One of the next two prison cells was empty, although the floor was intact, so the man must have escaped. Inside the other, the prisoner still stood ramrod straight, paralyzed. His eyes met Everard's.
Everard needed to get out of here quick. Bowman or the CEO could show up at any moment, and given how he felt, Bowman wouldn't even need his lighter to take Everard down. But he couldn't abandon the poor guy trapped like that.
Everard went to his side, examined his constraints. No shackles or ropes or anything, just a needle stuck into his lower spine, hooked up to a wire that disappeared into the wall.
"Do I pull out the needle or cut the wire?" asked Everard.
He couldn't interpret the panicked stare.
"Cutting the wire sounds safer. I'll let someone who knows what they're doing mess with things jammed into your spine." Everard pulled out his utility tool. "I'm not going to accidentally kill you by doing this, am I?"
He didn't get an answer, if it were him, he'd rather chance death than remain stuck here. And Everard didn't exactly have time to stress out over this. He cut through the wire.
The man collapsed.
"Shit," said Everard, crouching to help him.
The man leapt up, propelling himself into the air, then fell back down. Again, he tried to stand, but only succeeded in hurling himself around.
"Hey buddy, calm down."
"Out!" he shouted.
Only a few minutes earlier, that massive nightmare had shoved Everard's consciousness into a tiny corner of his mind. Maybe this was what happened when you were stuck like that for a long time. You didn't know how much mental effort it took to perform simple actions, so when you tried to stand you jumped.
The newly freed man booked it for the door, stumbling and leaping like a wounded animal.
"Hey, let me help you," said Everard.
Before Everard could reach him, the man slipped on a dark spot, immediately went still. Everard ran to him, confused, since any blow that would knock him out would have been audible.
The dark spot was a crumpled up suit. How had it got all the way out here?
The man's arm was in the jacket sleeve up to his wrist. At first glance it appeared just an unlucky fall, but Everard had the idea it was worse than that.
The man twitched in little convulsions, jerked his arm down through the sleeve.
Everard grabbed the suit jacket, ready to yank it away, and then the man fluidly turn his head to smile at him.
"My sincerest thanks for your help. Won't you stay and let me introduce you to everyone?"
This wasn't the prisoner. It was the suit. Whatever the hell that meant, it was what the nightmare had shown him as his own future.
Inc wasn't a bunch of men wearing suits; it was suits wearing men.
Everard tried to pull the jacket off the prisoner, but it was too late. The man kicked Everard's feet out from under him. He slid towards a crack in the floor, held on at the last second. Wind passing under the floor and through the spider leg supports slipped up his pants legs to chill his sweat-soaked skin.
Everard rolled over in time to see the man readying a kick to his gut. He pulled the flintlock out of his belt and shot the man's ankle, sending him tumbling down to the bottom corner of the room.
Now that he knew these bodies were prisoners, he couldn't bring himself to really try to hurt them. He wondered how badly he'd hurt those guys in the lobby.
Jumping to his feet, Everard quickly ruled out rescuing this prisoner. Everard was too beat up and exhausted to wrestle him out of the jacket, at least in this unstable room with open pits every few feet.
"I'm sorry," he said, and ran for the door.
Surprisingly, it opened without resistance, if you didn't count it scraping against the now unlevel floor.
&nbs
p; He raised the pistol, expecting the CEO or Bowman to be waiting for him, but the office was empty. The damage was as extensive here as in the other room, cracks in the floor, gashes in the walls. The openings in the floor mostly looked over the abandoned cubicles below.
Everard had to break down the deadbolted door with the flintlock.
He ran into the twisted stairwell.
Loretta sprinted up the last flight of stairs.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"I came to break you out," she said.
"I'm already breaking out," Everard said. "You can help me run away."
They headed down, ignoring the creaks and moans of the damaged building.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Every step jolted Everard's already sore body. The invading presence was gone, but it had left nauseatingly vivid memories.
"What were you thinking?" spat Loretta. She led the way, leaping over a gap in the stairs. Sunlight poured in through a crack in the wall.
"That they had it coming," heaved Everard. He scrambled over the break in the stairs, not looking down at the expanse below.
"Wasps have it coming," said Loretta, "but I don't go around kicking every nest I can find."
The staircase evened out as they descended below the destruction of the Mariner's Box. Everard couldn't shake the feeling that the thing outside the elevator was now outside the stairwell. "I saw something in there."
Loretta stopped. "The Bloat?"
"The what?"
"It's hard to describe-"
"Yeah. That thing. What is it?"
Footsteps pounded up from below. Everard peered over the railing to see suits sprinting up the stairs.
"I'll explain once we get out of here. And you can explain how you're not dead."
"You killed their guy this morning," said Everard. "Can't you deal with these guys?"
Loretta looked up and down the stairwell, sizing up something. "He threatened my family, so I removed the threat. The CEO knows that's not an act of aggression." She climbed up onto the railing. "But if I attack his men in their own office building, that's starting a war."
