Citadel: The Concordant Sequence

by Matthew S. Cox

  It’ll feel like a nap, said Mom, somewhere in the depths of her memory.

  Finding nothing except the creepy-as-hell alien spider arms on the head end gathered around the breathing tube, she rolled over to float on her back as if in bed. The dark ceiling overhead held no answers. For a while, she listened to the whoosh-click-whoosh of her breathing hose and flicked at the billowing cloud of hair around her head.

  This has to be a dream. That’s the insecurity thing, right? Having a nightmare that you’re naked?

  She stared down at herself. Aside from the red dots the needles left behind, she looked unhurt. No freaky alien modifications. Her muscles ached, but not so much that moving became painful. The feeling reminded her of the day after Dad dragged her to the climbing place the first time. She’d spent two hours clinging to fake rocks with rainbow-colored plastic handholds, dangling, falling, and trying to pull herself up. They’d been there so damn much after that, she could scale the most difficult wall without even using her legs.

  Of course, climbing didn’t help her get out of a locked tank.

  “Hrrll!” she shouted, banging her hand on the side, but the syrup slowed her fist down so much it made no noise against the glass.

  A heavy thunk echoed in the goo. Her eyes widened. Loud mechanical whirring crawled up her spine and made her cringe. Air filled in above her, silver bubbles gathering and dancing against the glass. The clear ooze in which she floated started to drain. When the liquid reached the halfway point, the dark end of the tank past her feet snapped open―an iris door. With a loud pop, the air hose separated from the wall behind her, and the tank tilted forward. Smooth metal and slippery gel sent her hurtling downward in a wash of transparent fluid.

  All the slime, and Kiera, plunged into a drain.

  She shrieked, dropping near vertically for a few feet before reaching a bend and sliding with the torrent into total darkness. Lost to panic, Kiera flailed and shrieked as she swooshed around one turn after another.

  The next thing she knew, she had stopped moving. Warm air puffed against her left thigh, in time with her breathing. She opened her eyes and found herself lying face down on a metal grating, the end of the air hose connected to her mask under her leg. Her hair, burdened with the liquid from the tank, congealed against her back like a dead, frozen jellyfish. A weird spattering noise broke the silence.

  She pushed herself up and twisted around, cringing at the feeling of her jelly-hair sliding off her back. The splattering ceased as a continuous dribble of clear ooze stopped landing in her hair and fell, freezing, on her stomach. With a squeal of alarm, she scooted away from the dribble and looked up at a wide pipe in the middle of the ceiling. She’d landed in a bare metal chamber a little bigger than her old bedroom. Aside from the pipe overhead, the only way out appeared to be a square hatch high up to her left. A series of rungs like giant staples embedded in the wall offered a way to reach it. Drips and gurgles from viscous liquid came from below the grating, but the two tiny lights near the hatch didn’t reach down into the murk. From the echoing sounds, she imagined a giant tank of goo beneath her.

  I guess I passed out… I don’t remember falling in here.

  Shaking from the cold, she sat up and wrapped her arms around her legs. Slippery ooze clung to her like a second slimy skin.

  This dream is going to send me to a therapist.

  She fidgeted at her immobilized jaw, unable to close or even open it any farther with the mask wedged between her teeth and under her chin. The face guard pressed so tight into her cheeks she couldn’t get a finger under it. Three feet of hose dangled from the front, swinging about like an elephant’s trunk as she craned her neck to look around. For a few minutes, she grabbed, twisted, and pulled at it, but the device fit so snug, it wouldn’t even shift. Panic rose up again, and she lapsed into short, rapid breaths. Kiera clutched the band around her head and tried to break it with brute strength. After a while of struggling, she realized it wouldn’t snap and got control of herself. Eyes closed, she slouched in defeat, shivering.

  “Hrrll!” Her voice came out the end of the hose.

  No one’s going to understand me with this thing on. I’m alone in my nightmare… Don’t be scared. Only a dream. Why would a mask be locked on? She batted the hose back and forth while thinking it over. I was sleeping underwater. Or… underslime. Whatever dream bad guy put me in that thing didn’t want me to drown. The odd notion that her parents had made her get in the tank came out of nowhere.

  She felt around the plastic band and located a dial at the back, right above the sore spot. It hadn’t been locked on, merely designed to prevent accidentally coming off. After feeling around the mechanism for a moment, she guessed two halves joined at a release switch. Kiera grabbed the mask frame with one hand and twisted the dial with the other.

  Click.

  The band clamped around her skull popped open. Relieved, she went to spit out the mouthpiece, but it dangled only an inch from her lips on a hose as thick as her finger that went down her throat.

  She tried to blurt, ‘Eww!’ but only made herself gag.

  Gingerly, she grasped it and pulled. Tubing slid up from deep inside her stomach, leaving the taste of not-quite-beef in its wake. The sensation of it coming up felt so much like vomiting that she slouched forward and heaved. Coughing and crying, she gagged, glaring at the evil thing. A trace of peanut-butter-brown goop leaked from the end that had been in her belly. Cafeteria food flashed by in her thoughts. Everything had tasted the same. Exactly like that… stuff.

  The sight of it terrified her more than the spiders.

  A feeding tube… nightmares aren’t that detailed. In seconds, her brain rejected any notion that this could possibly be reality. She curled tighter, hugging her legs to her chest, shivering from the coating of frigid, clear ooze. Sitting on a metal grating became uncomfortable in short order. Kiera crawled to the area of smooth metal floor by the ladder. She stood, but her feet kept sliding in the slime.

  She spent a few minutes wiping her hands down her body, slinging goo off to the side. Without the mask stuffed in her mouth, her teeth chattered. It took her a while to squeegee slime from her hair. When it stopped coming out by the handful, she leaned to the side and combed her fingers through it until she had a thick blanket of ick adhered to her back. She wrapped her arms around herself and stood there shivering.

  “’Kay… This is messed up. I’m in a metal room after getting flushed like a dead goldfish, and I have no clothes.” She squatted and bowed her head. The idea of sitting died as fast as she thought of it; butt plus cold steel floor equaled no way. “I’ll wait here until I wake up.”

  A few minutes passed where the chamber only seemed to get colder.

  “All right. I’ll play. Stupid dream.” She stood and stretched, whining from stiff muscles. “Ow. Why am I so sore?”

  She examined her arm where the needle went in a few inches below her elbow. The other one hit her nearer the shoulder, so she couldn’t see the puncture too well. A red dot looked only slightly nastier than a vaccine shot despite the needle being about a foot long. She reached up and felt around the back of her neck. Her hand came back bloody.

  “Crap. I’m bleeding.” Again, she squatted, clamping one hand to the back of her head and pressing down. “I need a Band-Aid or something.” She frowned, then laughed. “Or something. Yeah. I need something… like pants. Ugh. What did I eat that’s giving me dreams this bad?”

  After a while of holding pressure on the back of her neck, her hand swipes didn’t show any fresh blood. She eased herself standing and eyed the ladder while shivering. Okay, dream. You’re not going to let me wake up until I see whatever it is you want me to see, are you?

  About seven feet separated the bottom of the hatch from the top of her head. A dim glowing green circle at the middle looked a lot like a button. She pulled herself up the ladder, stiff muscles protesting her idea to move in a third dimension. When she reached the top, she pressed her hand into t
he light spot.

  A loud hiss of air and a distinct clank startled a shriek out of her. The hatch sank into the wall two inches then lowered out of the way. Behind it, a squat corridor ran to the left and right. Pipes of varying size covered the far wall, awash with a grid pattern of white-blue light. She stepped up another rung and peered out.

  Left held a dead end a short distance away with four large metal cabinets into which numerous fat wires connected. To the right, the corridor went a good distance before bending a corner. Reluctantly, she crawled into the dry space, which offered a little more warmth than where she’d been. Heat spread over her face, her cheeks likely as red as her hair. Of course, for it to be embarrassing to be stuck without clothing, she would have to not be dreaming. If a dream person saw her, it would all be in her mind and that wouldn’t bother her.

  The hatch hissed, making her jump and whirl around, too stunned to do anything more than watch it close. A green button on the wall next to the hatch looked like it would open it from this side, but the chamber didn’t have any other way to go. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, trying to warm up while gazing around at the low ceiling only inches away from the top of her head, also a metal grating. An adult would have to stoop, so she figured she’d wound up in a maintenance space below the floor. She raised up on tiptoe, peering up past the grate, coughing at dust. The hallway looked like a high-tech office or hospital with plain white doors and large windows. Dirt coated everything. Smashed, broken ceiling lights dangled from wires. Large black letters on the wall spelled, ‘Basement 02.’

  Kiera crept forward, gazing upward more than forward. A few times, she stopped to push on the grating overhead, but it didn’t even rattle. Eeriness clawed at her back. Wherever she’d dreamed herself into being, the place looked like it had been abandoned for a long time. She tried to remember what video game had a forgotten lab complex, but the scenery didn’t match anything in her memory.

  She rounded a right turn at the end and sighed at an even longer section of identical corridor with more pipes along the walls and grating overhead. “Great, I’m a hamster in a really long cage with no wheel to run on.”

  After another thirty feet, the passage cornered left. She couldn’t quite force her legs to jog, but managed a fast limping walk. By the time she reached the turn, the pain and stiffness had faded away. Again, she huddled at the wall and peeked around, intending to hide from anyone who might be there, but the hallway was empty. Some sixty feet farther ahead, the corridor cornered to the right. A quarter of the way down, a ladder on the wall led up to a hatch in the grating.

  “Yes!”

  She ran to the ladder and climbed. This hatch had no button, but it flipped upward with little effort. Kiera pulled herself up to stand on the metal grating she’d been walking beneath. Giant windows with frosted lettering spelling ‘Citadel Corporation’ on both sides looked into rooms filled with cubicles. Dim emergency lights painted everything in shades of blue, making her feel like a ghost in a dead place. None of the rooms had windows, though a few had paintings of sunny meadows. She headed for the closest door on the left, but found it locked.

  A black rectangle on the wall by the handle appeared to be where someone would swipe an ID badge to open it. It had a clear plastic strip on the bottom that she worried ought to be glowing red or green. Seeing it dark didn’t fill her with hope. In fact, it filled her with the exact opposite of hope.

  Kiera darted across to the next plain white door, waving her arms for balance whenever her slimy feet slipped. It, too, refused to budge. She backtracked the way she’d come, checking every door. Some rooms had windows, revealing conference tables or medical labs. The majority of the doors occupied blank walls with no windows, but none of them opened. She ran to the end of the hallway and crashed into a pair of steel double-doors blocking her path.

  Grunting and growling, she pulled at the handles, but couldn’t get them to budge.

  “Is anyone here?” She banged on the doors, sending echoing booms into the passageway beyond. “I need help!”

  She took a step back, fuming. When she bowed her head, all her rage flashed into terror at the sight of a bloody boot print between her feet on the metal grating. She twisted, peering back over her shoulder. The trail of footprints led to the second door on the right, one she’d tried and failed to open.

  Kiera grabbed her head, shaking it. “No… no… this isn’t real.”

  She started to tiptoe around the awful footprints, but forced herself to stop. Grimacing, she squatted near one, examining it. In the dim light, she couldn’t tell much by sight, so she touched a single fingertip to it.

  Dry.

  Her sigh of relief broke the quiet. Whoever had been here and hurt people had to be long gone, or the prints would be wet.

  She stood and hurried back down the hall, past the hatch, and around a corner to a stretch of corridor with yet more windows. A short distance ahead on the left, she peered in on a shower area similar to the fitness center at her parents’ office. Across the hall behind another inoperable locked door stood a cafeteria-style room with long tables and plastic chairs. Dead vending machines lined the inner wall.

  “This isn’t fair!” she shouted, her voice echoing over the stillness.

  The sensation of being coated in cold, slippery ooze prodded her into the shower room. Dust covered the floor, deep enough to feel like she walked on powder. The small chamber had three shower stalls and a steel door to the right with a narrow strip of window that offered a view of lockers. Alas, that door refused to open. Out of spite, she pounded her fist on the dead ID badge reader. Still shivering, Kiera sighed at the showers and looked down at herself.

  “Might as well… I’m already undressed.”

  She crept into a stall and reached for the knob, twisting a quarter of the way toward ‘hot’ before pulling on it. It made a sharp squeak, but no water came from above―not even a drop. Kiera stared at the showerhead for a moment before letting her arm drop back to her side.

  “What happened here? Why does nothing work?”

  The other two stalls proved equally useless, so she trudged into the hallway again, creeping along dreading at any moment someone would spring out of nowhere and she’d get in trouble (or made fun of) for not having anything on. Another double door blocked the end of that section. Kiera grumbled at it, expecting it would be locked as well, but the last door on the left hung open a few inches. She started to squeal in delight, but contained her hope of finding something to wear or eat.

  “Why am I worrying about food? This is a stupid dream.”

  Kiera jogged to the door, the clap of her feet on the floor chasing her. A mangled handle lay on the grating nearby; bullet holes marred the door where it had been.

  “Holy crap! Someone shot it!” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “No. Stop talking like this is real. No one shot it. I’m dreaming that someone shot it.”

  She took a few breaths to calm down and peeked in.

  The space held four desks, two against the wall in front of her, two by the wall facing the corridor. A pair of tall metal cabinets stood at the narrow end. All had computer terminals similar to the one she had in her bedroom at home. Of course, the one she had at home hadn’t been riddled with bullets. Someone shot everything in here to bits. Fragments of plastic littered the floor. Curiously, she didn’t see any brass lying around. Just like a video game, the empty shell casings disappeared after a while. Then again, so did the bullet holes… usually.

  “Yeah. I’m dreaming. This is the same computer I have.”

  Of course, the D-9500 terminal was everywhere. Even Ashleigh had one. Most of the workstations at her parents’ company had them. Grumbling, she padded up to the cabinets, careful not to step on any sharp pieces. No lock kept the doors closed, but her hope died a quick death at spotting nothing useful inside: only shelves of computer parts and blank optical disks.

  Kiera returned to the hallway, pacing around randomly. “This is a r
eally screwy nightmare. Other than being stuck in a creepy place, it’s not that scary.” She frowned at herself. That book said the naked dream is like being on a stage in front of people or dreaming that you’re somewhere you’d normally be―only without clothes. It’s supposed to represent fear of a situation… but there’s no one here.

  A momentary image of floating in the tank with Mom peering down on her, jet-black hair framing an expression of total worry filled her mind. Her mother had turned away and removed her bra. Did they all get in tanks?

  “No, that’s just a bad dream, too.”

  Kiera squatted again, hugging her knees to her chest and sniffling. She’d had that dream before… being dragged down the hallway to the tank, her parents terrified about something but not telling her what. But every time she had that dream, she’d wake up in her bedroom and go to school. Mrs. Kee, the counselor, thought it had some hidden meaning and gave her the link for the e-book on dream meanings. Perhaps a bit advanced for a sixth-grader, but she managed to follow it for the most part.

  The feeding tube haunted her, a scratch at the back of her throat. Had she felt it in school when she started to doze off? All those cold flashes, and that stuff not making sense. She grabbed the back of her head. A needle into the brain… was I in virtual reality? The school year seemed to be taking forever, like the same few days happening over and over. It’s not 2032, because I was ten. I’m eleven! I remember my birthday party! If that life had been false, what did that mean for the blood on the ground by her parents’ tanks?

  She lost a few minutes crying, grief-stricken.

  Eventually, she wiped her face on the back of her arm and stood.

  “If this is a dream, it’s not going to end ’til it’s over.” She sighed at the ceiling. “Yeah that was a dumb thing to say. If this is real, I’m in big trouble. I gotta get out of here.”