Dark Secret

  SABLUNE

  The man standing at the reception desk noticed us immediately and waved us over, in response, I stayed put just outside the elevator and raised my weapons in a warning gesture.

  “Love, what’s the problem?” Nova uttered softly.

  I eyed the man at the desk. “I don’t trust it.”

  “You don’t trust anyone or anything,” Fadabiea’s tone was pouty and careless.

  She pushed passed me, whispering, her voice tainted with irritation and stress, “It’s rude to eavesdrop, bitch.”

  Not surprising, I thought blandly.

  I figured Fadabiea would suspect I was listening in on them, not that they could sense my presence when I was invisible in the dark, but rather that they would expect it from me. Because I’m just like that.

  We moved forward as a unit and approached the man, some with caution, some with weariness and indifference.

  “Hello, wonderful evening out, isn’t it?”

  “Bro, what?” Aushen said in disbelief.

  He wore khakis and a red T-shirt that read, “The Preservation Project” near the top right of it. There wasn’t much to be weary of, just a white guy in some glasses and shorts, doing who the hell knows what.

  Aerix spoke up first, “what can we help you with?”

  “Ah ah ah,” he said disapprovingly, waving his finger at us. “That’s what I’m supposed to ask you all.” He motioned to his shirt.

  “Okay, well, what exactly are you here to help us with?”

  “I’m so glad you asked, first off you can call me Darrell,” with a friendly smile he stuck out his hand and shook it with Aerix, who stared at their palm, confused.

  -This whack-job is gonna get us killed or kill us himself.-

  I could see Riflecks nodding in agreement through the slit of the cage in my mind.

  Darrell reached under his desk and pulled out a large binder and began flipping through it vigorously. “I work for an organization called The Preservation Project, and as the name states we run a hotel on Index Six of Verestia.”

  “Why?” My rival deadpanned.

  “Does he need a reason to help people?” My wife put a hand on each of our shoulders.

  Bitha and I turned to her in disbelief, then in confusion to each other.

  He stopped flipping and pointed at one of the pages showing numerous empty blocks placed in columns. “The rooms closest to us are mostly full, so any newcomers usually have a far walk to their rooms-”

  “You serious?” Nika groaned.

  “BUT we recently amended that problem with a new piece of technology we call the ‘Gatekeeper,’ that allows you to link an entrance in one Index to an entrance somewhere else, as long as it has been there.

  “Yay for you.” This guy was way too normal to feel comfortable with. Especially being surrounded by these psych ward escapees.

  “Now, will you six be rooming together?” His eyebrow climbed upward in anticipation.

  Although there was a lot of information to digest, Aerix responded with minimal hesitation. “A room for us.” They gestured to themself and Fadabiea. “For them.” Referring to Nova and I. Nika spoke up before Aerix finished, pointing at Aushen, “We’ll be separate, please.”

  “Okie dokie, I’ll fetch Sylvia and have her take you to your rooms; you will all be in section E-forty-six, about a two-kilometer walk down an exceptionally long hallway; on the bright side, it’s one of the more modernized sections that we have. So, you’ll be free of the opulent 1920’s look.” He unclipped some papers from the binder and handed them to four of us. “Paperwork,” he groaned slightly before leaving his desk and heading through a door along the back wall.

  Aerix faced Nika, “I was going to separate you and Aushen, you know that right?”

  “Thought so, just made sure.”

  I looked down at my paper and read some of the contents, they were mostly disclaimers about the safety of restricted areas and obeying hotel rules and such. I picked up a pen from a jar on Darrell’s desk and deflated into one of the many chairs available, Nova sat down next to me. My eyes drifted to the line of text that stated the first week was free, after the trial period, payment will be collected through either standard units, supplies, and/or service to the hotel, as it needs to pay its staff for their work.

  I checked the “I understand” box, not really knowing what else to do, and moved back to the desk and returned the pen. By the time Darrell got back, everyone had finished filling out their papers, which he collected with a nod, before stepping aside for Sylvia to take over.

  “Hi, everyone! It’s so great to meet you all!” She clasped her hands together excitedly, echoing through the otherwise quiet lobby. “My name’s Sylvia, or you can call me Via; either is fine. I’ll be the one to lead you to your rooms and answer any questions you may have.”

  Her bronze hoop earrings bobbled with each word, along with her blonde hair and the rest of her hyper body. She wore the same Preservation Project shirt that Darrell had on, but navy blue, and she had on black pants and a pair of beat-up Reeboks. She was extremely friendly, which made me immediately tired of her; she was nice in the way that you could tell she was trying to please you, but thankfully, not in the way that it appeared she was covering up a venomous attitude.

  “Lead the way, Sylvia,” I said, more indifferently than I intended, much to Nova’s pleasure.

  Via led us up the left set of stairs to the second floor and through a door with the letter “E” carved into it. We walked through the expansive hallway that was so long I wondered if I was going to even make it to the room before the week was up; assuming time flowed in a consistent manner here, I’d have to ask Nika.

  We passed signs that designated the various areas of the hallway; each section had 15 rooms in them; we passed a sign labeled “Forty-Five” and stopped.

  “Here we are,” Sylvia said cheerfully.

  She reached into a handbag I hadn’t noticed her carrying before and pulled out some triangular devices and started speaking in a more serious tone. “So, before I give you these, it’s standard protocol that I make you aware of the rules of the hotel, but since they list some on the paper as well as the other various pieces of info about us, I’ll give you the short version.”

  She began counting on her fingers dramatically as she relayed the various regulations to us, “First off: Violence is out of the question, especially against other guests. Secondly: Do not enter any restricted areas. We haven’t cleared those out for people so they might be dangerous and full of entities. And thirdly: We ask that you don’t go into the Storage room without permission from the staff or to enter the ballroom outside dancing hours.”

  “That’s all, here are your Gatekeepers, you use them by opening the door you want to use as a gateway, specify where you want it to take you on the readout and place it on the side of the door, close the door, and reopen it and it should lead to the location you chose. It does have an option for changing levels; we haven’t solved that function yet, but it should work otherwise.”

  Nika, almost too fast to observe, flipped her bag over her head and onto the ground in front of her. It expanded into her portable workbench. She stuck out her hand. “Gatekeeper, please.”

  Sylvia handed one to her, confusion clear on her face at the sudden interest in the hotel’s tech. Nika pulled Aerix and me over to her, speaking insistently, “Do your thing.”

  This caused me momentary confusion, but I understood what she meant; Aushen had told her how we jumped across an Index once, after finding out from us when we first met him down here. Nika, very quickly, might I add, put together a sort of diamond-shaped brace that looked like an overly futuristic television antenna. If they had television antenna in the future.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “Your hands, in the ability stasis bracket. Do it. Fast.”

  “No patience,” I breathed quietly.

  Aerix held out their hand and a crack distorted reality, at the same time that I plunged my hand through the brace, covered in darkness, coloring the cracks charcoal black. Unexpectedly, Nika intervened in her own way; she slammed her two discs flatly against each other. An inexplicable ripple flowed through my body, I turned to my friends whose faces showed that I wasn’t the only one that felt it.

  “What exactly did you do?” I wasn’t quite sure what she was trying to achieve.

  “I slowed the Concept Energy in time; this stasis bracket will allow me to afflict certain materials with its effects. Aerix, you can make stones that conduct Concept Energy, right?”

  “I can.”

  “I’ll have a rock like that.”

  Within a minute, Nika was catching a rough-edged stone out of the air and chiseling away at it. She pried open the back of the Gatekeeper and reworked some of the wiring, which was big genius stuff that I couldn’t comprehend. After touching the chiseled stone to the top of the stasis bracket, black and gray energy jumped to it like an electrical shock; the energy continued to flicker in a similar way within the translucent stone. Nika plugged the rock into a newly created socket on the Gatekeeper; her face was determined and confident.

  “You guys are magic users…” Sylvia said in awe.

  Fadabiea corrected her immediately, “We don’t do magic. We control aspects of the world around us, not create and destroy things on an ethereal plane. Echoes are what we are called; we are something that is best described as ‘Concept Manipulators.’ Our ‘Powers,’ as most people so callously call them, are better referred to as Concepts themselves.”

  “Nerd,” Aushen coughed.

  Fadabiea might have retaliated if Nika had not first said, “Right, let’s try this out, shall we?”

  She moved to the first door in our section and opened it, revealing the basic bedroom inside before she set the Gatekeeper for Level 1 and shut the door.

  “I thought it had to be on the level or area before you were able to transport to it,” Nova said with surprising intrigue.

  “Oh, it does from this point forward, but the gem and Concept Energy inside of it have been through all the levels before this, so it should work,” Nika clarified a little unsurely.

  When she opened the door again, the Gatekeeper was where she had left it, but we were no longer looking at a hotel room. The concrete floors and car plant facilities of Index 2 were familiar yet shocking to see again so soon. I could make out puddles of water and totaled cars lying sporadically along the floor before Nika removed the device and shut the door. When she opened it again, we were once again looking into a comfortably furnished bedroom.

  “This is revolutionary, you guys have just made traveling to places you’ve been so much easier.” Via's eyes sparkled; she was enthralled with the upgraded tech. “Forget payment after a week, if you supply us with these upgrades to all of our Gatekeepers, I don’t think the higher-ups will care if you have a free pass for as long as you stay. You’ll be VIPs for sure.”

  “I think I may take you up on that offer, assuming you find out it’s an option for us,” Nika agreed.

  We bid goodbyes to Sylvia as she stepped through one of the doors, with her Gatekeeper that Nika swiftly altered for her with the rest she had given to us and began sorting out whose rooms were whose.

  The rooms were very spacious, it included a living room area, with a couch and coffee table. The room was connected to both a bathroom and a bedroom that were both very decorative for a hotel. We had running water and heat with air-conditioning, which was a pleasant surprise. Nova dove onto the bed immediately and just lay there comfortably with a dead expression in her eyes. I returned to the living room and picked up a brochure that was left on the coffee table, it had info about various attractions and benefits of the hotel. We had options between things like a shopping area, a pool, and even a food court. The reading told me that lot of the services were improvised and would not function as they would in a normal hotel. I assumed that meant places for shopping and dining might be different from other standard hotels.

  “Shopping,” I sighed with displeasure.

  “Shopping?” Nova was standing in the door, eyes wide.

  So naturally, we went shopping.

  ***

  I couldn’t complain entirely, I needed new clothes, after confirmation from Nika that we’d been in the Complex for almost six days, I was ready for a change.

  Nova refused to leave my side when we entered the hotel's shopping section, which happened to be a warehouse on one of the lower floors. The section mostly focused on clothing, daily-life materials, and weapons. I naturally went to the men’s department to look for my clothes. I was surprised at the abundance of clothes to choose from. I deduced that most of it was from the lost and found and whatever clothing people left when they came here.

  I had picked out something like six outfits, by the time I had looked through everything; consisting of different sweatpants, jeans, and underwear, maybe a few shirts here and there. Nova was plodding along in front of me, more enthused about my choice in clothes than I was, calling out to me every time she seen something worth remarking on, “Look at these.” She held up a pair of black underwear.

  “I don’t wear boxers, nor will you be having a say in anything I choose to wear beneath my clothes.”

  We continued through the store, looking around some more before we checked out. I decided I didn’t need any more shoes and that my boots would suffice, not like this was a permanent arrangement. Nova stopped and looked through some skirts which I couldn’t help but give my opinions on, in spite of the hypocrisy. When we looked at all of the women’s section, she settled on some white shirts and bleached white jeans as well as a single white skirt. We both also got some swimsuits just in case we did decide to check out the pool.

  I went to the hygiene section while she went to look for undergarments of her own, I needed to brush my teeth badly. Consistently flushing my mouth with soap had left an odd taste on my tongue. I selected some obscure brand of toothpaste and grabbed some toothbrushes for my Wife and I, who then appeared next to me waving something in my face.

  “Whatchya thiiiink?” Nova’s voice wasn’t very loud, but it was not as quiet as it should have been.

  Considering she was waving lingerie in the air like party streamers.

  “You have got to get it together, Sweetie.” I yanked the silky lace material from her hand and stuck it into the bundle of clothes tucked under her other arm, effectively concealing it from the other people in the store.

  “You called me Sweetie,” Nova pointed out with an endeared smile.

  “I did. You act like I can’t sweet talk my wife.”

  “You can when you want to, it appears,” Nova was mildly giddy, since I so rarely show affection in public. Or at least the level of affection she would like; but in my defense, places like downtown are just not the place for a lip-lock.

  We start off to the checkout zone with our haul for the day. “I hope Aushen gave us enough units.”

  I had him dump some of the plastic currency with us since it was clear he had an abundance of it from is time down here. I told him we would spend reasonably, knowing that the others would need to buy clothes as well. After checking out, which was no different than purchasing trinkets at a gift shop, I handed Nova the Gatekeeper for her to calibrate it; I took the clothes that she was holding, to make room in her hands for the device. She placed the triangular mechanism against a maintenance closet door and began tapping away at the buttons on it.

  “Nova, it goes on the other side,” I said into the pile of clothes in my face.

  She corrected it and opened the door to our room, and I slipped inside before I started dropping clothes, and threw our purchases on the bed. Nova snapped up the underwear she bought and ran to the bathroom. “Going to shower, feel free to join,” she called almost tauntingly.

  Not even going to entertain that.

  I pulled out my phone and called Fadabiea to discuss what our next goal is. We knew the game plan was to leave, but we were still in the phase of figuring out how. Fadabiea figured that we should just keep jumping from level to level. “There’s a chance the exit is at the end of all these levels.”

  The shower hissed to life from the other side of the door and figured I would fold my clothes while speaking with Fadabiea. I sat the phone down on my lap and put it on speaker, “I like the idea of reaching the end, but we don’t know how long that would take, this place may not even have an end.”

  Fadabiea sighed over the phone, “Maybe Nika can come up with something; Aushen spoke to her about it a while ago.”

  “I don’t know, Bitha, maybe we just keep fighting through it and the end will find us. After all it’s the only thing that we’re good at.”

  Sounds of steamy water in the bathroom died down to a drip, and I steeled myself to push back against Nova’s advances. The doorknob clicked, and she stepped out wrapped in a towel, “I see you decided not to join me.”

  “What made you think I would?”

  “My taste in clothing, maybe. Your undying love for me,” She batted her eyes at me. “Because I’m your beautiful wife. Those all seem like decent reasons.”

  I saw the look in her eyes, she was determined. Now was the time to decipher her thoughts and prepare to defend against her best I could.

  “Fadabiea, I might have to call you back.”

  I set the clothes aside and inhaled, preparing to make some snide remark to discourage her. Then, she did the worst thing possible.

  She dropped the towel.

  “Oops,” she said lamely before tackling me with a voracious kiss.

  I looked down at the drop of dark blood that splashed into the “end call” button on my phone. The split skin on my lip sent an electric sting through me when Nova gently rubbed her thumb across my mouth from corner to corner.

  The look she gave me was completely innocent for the short, tranquil moment she took to caress my cheek. But as soon as she licked the blood from her finger and grinned at me I knew I wasn’t getting another full breath for the next two hours.

  “Sifyx. Off,” Nova commanded, causing my hoodie to fall apart like puzzle pieces and reassemble on a hanger in the closet.

  My resistance started to waver, and my arms went slack.

  I gave up then.

  “No means no...?” I tried diplomatically.

  “You are mine,” she snarled at me.