The Complex

by Michael Walters

  He had no weapon, no object, no goal. There was no score, no levels and no clue as to what would happen next.

  The man swayed and sat on a chair opposite the door they had come out of. The woman sat on his lap and started to kiss him, her dress riding up her bare legs. Stefan approached.

  The woman noticed him.

  ‘Hey,’ she said.

  ‘Hi.’ His voice was his own, but what could she see?

  ‘I think you’re on the wrong floor,’ the woman said, her accent European. He couldn’t place it.

  ‘I’m lost,’ he said.

  ‘We’re all lost, honey.’

  Her face was thick with white makeup, her lips purple, her eyebrows barely there at all.

  She leaned back so Stefan could see the man’s face. He was in his late thirties, clean-shaven and snoring gently.

  ‘Whose party is it?’ he asked, listening to the happy chattering in the room behind.

  The woman was about to speak but the lights dimmed and the building shook, once, then again, as if a giant were trying to dislodge something. The lights came back. The voices behind him had gone quiet.

  ‘Whose party is it?’ the woman repeated.

  She looked different, a sheen of sweat under her makeup, as if she had run up and down the corridor in a blink of his avatar’s eye.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he said.

  ‘Would you like to meet the hosts?’

  The lights dimmed again, and he braced for the building to shake. It didn’t. The woman stood up. She was tall, taller than he had expected, and he stepped back. She looked over his shoulder into the room that was now silent.

  His intuition said, don’t look, but it was just a game, wasn’t it? Some sort of horror puzzle. His heart was hammering facing this unnerving woman, who was still looking behind him, face white, like an actor under a stage light.

  He heard a clatter of chairs and table, shoes on hard floor. The woman stepped away from him. The man who had been asleep now had his eyes open and was looking straight at Stefan, his face hard.

  ‘RUN!’ Fleur’s computer voice shouted from somewhere in the ceiling.

  He bolted past the couple onto another long corridor. He was fast, which was something. There was a lift on the right and ahead lots of people in green uniforms. Then he saw the woman again and realised, just as she spotted him, that he was in a loop. She was a head taller than the men in uniform. She pointed, her arm long, her face running with her makeup. Stefan frantically pressed the buttons on the lift. The floor number above the door said 003.

  ‘Make this stop, Fleur,’ he shouted.

  The soldiers were running at him, the woman behind them, a terrible, toothy smile on her melting face.

  Not waiting for the lift, he took the first door he saw. Stairs. He flew down them, as fast as his misshapen feet would go. After three flights, he heard the door crash open above him and the shouts of men, along with their feet in the stairwell.

  He came out in the lobby of a hotel. The reception desk was ornate, gold-lined, but the rest of the space was bare concrete floor and white walls. Above, there were exposed iron girders and wires hanging. There was no front door.

  ‘Fleur,’ he shouted into the half-finished lobby.

  A light came on over a door to his left. He ran to it. Behind him the men in uniform flooded the reception area, about a dozen of them. One pointed at him and shouted something he didn’t understand. The last thing he saw as he pulled the door behind him were their furious faces and green, dress uniforms.

  Something was wrong in the simulation. He stood in blackness, the door gone, his feet feeling ground where there was none.

  ‘Fleur?’

  Everything pitched and tilted, as it had when he had first put on the headset, but now he was floating above a village. He saw his breath, but he didn’t feel cold. There was a small square with two white stone buildings. Something was controlling him. He could look around, but not move. People were coming out of the smaller white building. There was snow on the ground and some of them had blankets on their shoulders. They looked as if they had been taken from their homes quickly. Some were still in dressing gowns.

  There were soldiers in green uniforms, herding the people towards the road. There was rumbling. A military lorry came into the square, then another, then another. They stopped in a line at the bottom of the building steps.

  He was moved closer. The line of people moved to the back of the last lorry and a soldier stood, watching them climb in. He had a gun on his shoulder. An older woman couldn’t lift herself up and started to cry. A man behind her said something and she tried again. The soldier stepped in to help. A little girl, already in the lorry, pulled at her arm and the soldier put his shoulder under her. The older woman disappeared. Three soldiers watched silently from the steps.

  Nobody seemed to be speaking. Perhaps it was too cold. Again, Stefan noticed how comfortable he felt, neither warm nor cold, floating. Being controlled wasn’t freaking him out, and he wondered at that. Everything in this part of Fleur’s world had a pin-sharp clarity. He could see the tiny spots on the snow beneath him, the cloudy breath of each soldier, the fumes from the lorries. That was quite a detail.

  Then the lorries were pulling away, in convoy, and Stefan was moved onto the roof of the last lorry, though his feet didn’t touch the canvas. They left the village. The lanes had been cleared of snow, but it was thick on the sides where the snow had been pushed. The streetlights stopped. The fields were brightened by the moon. They approached a mountain, a mile from the village. To the right, across a narrow field, a church was lit with floodlights. Another lorry, like the ones in the convoy, was waiting outside the church grounds walls. There was something else. A tank. The convoy of lorries slowed, then stopped.

  The tank stopped by the gates and slowly swivelled its turret towards the church doors.

  The high door to the church opened on one side and a small figure appeared, waving their arms. Then, the field was filled with light and the church front blew inwards, the boom fractionally behind. The church was only half standing, the front gone. There was a rustling that he realised was stone hitting the earth in the fields around. A single scream. The tank fired again.

  ‘Fleur, what is this?’

  It seemed he was on his own. The lorry began to move. He could hear shouts and crying from the people beneath him. The mountain loomed. He felt panic begin to well. He remembered a film he had watched as a child where a man was buried alive, the image of him pushing helplessly at the coffin lid, kicking and clawing, burnt into Stefan’s mind.

  He slowed his breathing, blinked, moved his head – but from the hips down it was like he was encased in concrete.

  ‘Fleur, if you can hear me, stop this. Please.’ His voice was cracking.

  There was no reply.

  The convoy turned onto a dirt track and went into dark woods. There was a gate ahead. A checkpoint, with spotlights on the approach to it and soldiers standing on a high wall. Low concrete buildings. The gate was open, and they passed through without stopping. These soldiers were in black uniforms, not green. None of them looked up at him.

  It was a camp of some sort, but the buildings seemed permanent. The convoy turned right up a hill, without going into the main camp, and approached a cavern in the mountain. The road ran into it, lit with high, powerful lamps, then stopped at a smaller gate. There was a single, long vehicle waiting. He stayed on the roof as the people were herded from one vehicle to another. Nobody was talking.

  An unseen hand moved him to the roof of the new vehicle and they set off again.

  It was a well-lit, internal corridor and he was above some sort of electric, wheeled bus. It was fast. A few soldiers and people in white coats looked at them at first, coming and going from identical metal doors, but then there were no people, just closed doors, the sound of the wheel
s and the very faint whirr of the bus engine. It became dimmer and the polished concrete floor became rough with dust and bits of stone. The vehicle stopped by a door that was like all the others. There was no number or sign on it. One of the guards got out and knocked.

  It opened from the inside and the guard said something. He beckoned, and the people filed through the door, leaving Stefan alone above the guard. The driver of the vehicle appeared from his cabin once the door was closed.

  ‘Poor fuckers,’ the driver said.

  ‘It’s too late for that,’ said the guard.

  ‘I know. But still.’

  ‘They shouldn’t have kept coming.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Bulldozers.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  The door opened again. Stefan struggled, his legs still immobile. There was a hoarse shout from the door, then a high-pitched, terrible scream. Someone was saying something to the guard.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The guard nodded, then again. ‘Yes, sir.’

  The door was closed.

  ‘Who was that?’ the driver said, clearly unnerved.

  ‘The big man.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Hope you don’t see him again.’ The guard got into the bus. ‘Can you take me back?’

  ‘Yeah. We’ve got to go to the other end though. This thing doesn’t turn around.

  The bus pulled away beneath him. Stefan floated down until he was facing the door. He didn’t want to go through it. The thought was making him shake.

  ‘Stefan.’

  Fleur’s real voice. Her physical voice. Again, louder: ‘Stefan!’

  She was sitting astride him, on his stomach, her hands on his cheeks. The headset was gone. She slapped him once, hard.

  His body jerked, as if he was falling upwards at the ceiling.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Fleur said. ‘It’s okay. You’re back.’

  ‘Oh God,’ he said. He looked at her, the window, pulled at the bedclothes with his hands. Real. Real sheets, a real green skirt, a real black leather belt. ‘Thank God. Oh. Fuck.’

  ‘What happened?’ she said, climbing off him.

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’

  ‘I lost you.’

  ‘You lost me? How long was I out for?’

  ‘Four minutes. There was some sort of simulation error. Then you disappeared from the map.’

  His heart was still beating too fast. He stared at the ceiling. That had felt completely real. Was this real? What if he was still in the headset? He looked at his hands. He had fingerprints. The life lines on his palms were his.

  That would have to be good enough.

  Gabrielle: Hole

  Gabrielle woke needing the toilet. The bedroom was dark. The thin duvet covering her felt like it was pinning her down. She closed her eyes, then woke again, her bladder stinging. Some time had passed. Even thinking was an effort. She slowly pulled the duvet back, then stopped, exhausted.

  Art had given her a tablet and she had taken it. Like a good girl.

  In a series of all-body shuffles, she managed to sit up. Her head was foggy, and it reminded her of when she was sick, not knowing if she would ever go back to work. The crushing weight of existence.

  Her bladder was really quite painful. She stood and took a few steps, putting her hands on the mattress for balance, heading for the open bathroom door. Her feet were breeze blocks. With a final lurch, she got herself to the door frame. The bathroom light came on. The wood was cool on her cheek. One last effort. The toilet seat was down, and she sat on it, hard, letting her bladder go.

  ‘What are you doing out of bed?’ Art said from the doorway.

  Gabrielle bent forward to hide her breasts and continued to urinate.

  ‘Get out,’ she said.

  Art stepped back. She let her head dangle between her knees. As she finished peeing, she slid forward, helpless to stop herself and Art caught her with one arm across her bare chest.

  ‘You’re exhausted,’ he said.

  She was lifted over Art’s shoulder. The bathroom swung around, and she caught herself in the mirror, a sick girl being carried back to bed. He tucked her in. She liked it and hated him simultaneously.

  ‘Rest,’ Art said.

  She lay, head on the pillow, face turned away from him, legs pulled up into her stomach.

  She woke to a rough hand on her shoulder, turning her onto her back.

  ‘Wake up,’ a voice said.

  Whose voice was that?

  ‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’ the voice said.

  Had she spoken out loud?

  ‘You are safe. You’re well. Tell me about the amusement arcade.’

  It was true she felt comfortable. Her thoughts, though, were hazy. She had a sense she had talked about the arcade many times before with this voice.

  Her father often took her to an amusement arcade on a pier. She remembered looking from the double doors out to sea, the pier like a long path to the horizon. The fruit machines were her favourite – cherry, crown, BAR – and her father would lift her to drop coins in the slots, even though the signs said she was way too young. His cheeks were hairy and soft when he wasn’t working. She felt his hands on her waist, the joy of being lifted, of hearing the whir and hum of the coin being accepted. Then she was back on her feet and pressing the flashing yellow START button.

  Crown. Cherry. Cherry.

  ‘Bad luck,’ the voice said.

  ‘Can I have another go?’ she said.

  ‘As many as you like.’

  Instead, her father took her out onto the pier, holding her hand. There was no one around except a single figure at the very far end, facing the sea. Through the boards, she could see white foam and the swells she hated. A wave took you in to shore, but a swell was more mysterious, pitching to an unseen will. With a wave, you knew where you were. Her father stopped and looked over the side railings. She put her head through. Was this what a boat was like? If she fell, she would never reach the shore. She might be thrown into the metal guts of the pier, or worse, swept out to bob, alone, on the freezing sea.

  A seagull watched her from the railing, a little way along, its black eyes unreadable.

  ‘Daddy?’

  ‘Yes, sweetheart.’

  ‘Would you scare that seagull away?’

  ‘Let’s go out further.’

  Her father’s hand was warm and big, completely enveloping hers. She felt held tight. She felt safe, even though the pier seemed to be lifting with the swell of the sea beneath them, even though she wasn’t quite sure where she was.

  ‘Relax,’ the voice said.

  Whose voice was that?

  ‘Stop fighting it.’

  What was she fighting?

  ‘What about your father at the complex?’ the voice said.

  There were coats under and over her. She was behind her father’s car seat, her back against a blanket, playing a game. The rain was coming down hard on the car roof.

  ‘Don’t move,’ her father said.

  The car stopped, as he said it would, and she squeezed her bear into her chest, trying to make both of them disappear. There were different, brighter lights, so she covered herself more and closed her eyes. Voices. The car door opened, and the seat moved as her father got out. Cold air. Her father’s laugh. The door slammed shut. She was alone. The rain kept hitting the roof and she listened for patterns, though there were none. Like the drumming class in school. The man with the tangled hair who brought the drums in from his yellow van, who looked at her in a way she didn’t like.

  The car door opened, and her father got back in.

  ‘Take it easy,’ he said, to someone. The door clicked shut and the car started to move again.

  ‘You did good,’ he said.

  Now there were louder engines
, shouts, machinery.

  ‘Where are you?’ the voice said.

  Somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be. Her father was very clear about that.

  ‘Are you at the complex?’

  Perhaps she was. How could she know?

  ‘Relax.’

  ‘Who are you?’ she said aloud. She was in bed again.

  She heard the bedroom door open and then close.

  The voice was gone now. She dozed, drifting in and out of memories: her father holding her hand at the hospital, his head bandaged; Stefan as a baby, skin-on-skin, minutes old; her mother’s face, a fusion of memory and photograph.

  Her attention came back to the bedroom. Someone was with her and there was pressure on her arm followed by an excruciating sting, as if by a giant wasp. She heard herself make a gurgling gasp.

  Then she was sitting cross-legged in the dark. There was a rumble beneath her and a thin line of white light low to her left and right. It was a trolley and she was being wheeled along. She put her arms out and felt material pulled down all around her. She was being hidden. The trolley stopped suddenly and turned before being pushed again and finally stopping. The material was pulled back.

  ‘You can come out now.’

  Her father looked so young and beautiful, tears sprung from her eyes. He held out his smooth hand and she took it, letting him help her out of the trolley undercarriage. She recognised the insignia on his belt buckle. She looked up at him and he gave her a brief smile before turning away.

  It was an office. A wooden desk stretched along one wall with several computer screens, all off. There were two chairs and several keyboards. A framed photograph of a woman holding a baby caught her eye.

  ‘Recognise yourself?’ her father said.

  Gabrielle nodded. ‘And Mum,’ she said. Her mother was smiling. She had never seen that picture.