Kirev's Door

by JC Andrijeski

  Kirev bit his lip, wanting to ask.

  Instead he held the handgun he’d been given out in front of him but aimed at the floor, his finger resting on the barrel above the trigger. He increased the length of his steps when the other seers around him did theirs, pacing them even as he kept his light coiled discreetly around his body, his fingers tight around the gun.

  He’d already been warned not to send up any flares down here. The lower levels were likely being watched by seers, periodically at least, and Kirev didn’t have the sight skills in actual or the military training to be able to operate unseen in a place like this, not even for a short time.

  “There,” Wreg said then, pointing to a side corridor off the main. It wound to the right, just as they’d been saying. “At the end of that.”

  Tan nodded, then jogged up ahead, Rigor at his side.

  They reached a flat expanse of wall, a nondescript white.

  They were all just standing there then.

  Kirev stared at the wall, then around at the others, wondering what he was missing. Then Rigor pulled off his gloves with his teeth and began feeling over the flat surface of the wall with his bare hands. Kirev saw the others watching Rigor minutely, their bodies taut, their expressions holding a tension he could almost feel, even with his light guarded.

  Following their eyes back to the wall, that time, Kirev gasped.

  It had moved.

  The fucking wall had moved, like it was alive.

  He was still staring when he saw it again…a distinct ripple of motion over the front of that white surface, like liquid skin.

  “Gaos…di'lanlente a' guete! What the fuck is that!” he cried out.

  “Silence!” Ute said, glaring at him.

  Kirev clamped his mouth shut, doing as he was told.

  He had to clench his jaw to do it. He watched as Rigor continued to stroke the wall, almost like it was a giant cat. Kirev continued to stare, clenching his jaw so hard it hurt, when a sudden seam appeared in the middle of that blank, strangely white surface. That seam formed into two sliding doors as Kirev watched.

  He continued to stare, wide-eyed, feeling his heart slam against the ribs of his chest, as that seam opened, revealing what looked like another elevator shaft. Inside the shaft, the wall looked like dirty cement, nothing like that strange, skin-like white of the outer wall.

  Kirev bit his lip until he tasted blood, fighting to remain quiet.

  The seers around him didn’t speak either.

  Instead they stood there, watching as Wreg poked a cautious head inside the opening. After he’d looked up and down the shaft, he clicked his fingers again, motioning Ute forward with the rappelling gear. Within minutes they had it set up again and Wreg was on his way down.

  For the first time, Kirev felt himself balk at going further.

  Even so, when Ute motioned him forward next, after Tan and Rigor had followed Wreg, he barely hesitated. Forcing his legs and body forward, he stood there, holding his hands up with the gun in his hand as she strapped on the harness.

  When she slapped him smartly on the back, indicating he was ready, he didn’t hesitate either.

  Taking a deep breath, he held onto the cables and jumped into that dark.

  AT THE BOTTOM, there was only one room.

  Low-ceilinged and rectangular in shape, it seemed to stretch the length of a football field as the ceiling tiles lit up in symmetrical rows, with almost nothing in the way of furniture apart from a series of enclosed, glass-looking pods every six or so feet. Each of those containers stood at about chest height, Kirev noticed, with round, covered holes where a scientist might insert their hands without disturbing the sterility of whatever lived inside.

  They reminded him of images he’d seen in a magazine once, of a human child born with some disease that prevented him from living in regular air with regular bacteria and germs.

  Kirev didn’t know if the lights came on by themselves, or if one of the seers had triggered them with a switch, but the entire ceiling seemed to glow as he walked out over that linoleum floor. Looking up, he couldn’t see any lit tubes or bulbs of any kind embedded in that ceiling, either. Instead, the tiles themselves seemed to emit their own form of illumination, brighter than any artificial light Kirev had ever seen.

  He saw Tan looking at those same lights before he turned, giving Rigor a hard look.

  “You think those are alive, too?” Rigor whispered.

  “Alive?” Kirev said, whispering as well. “What does that mean?”

  Ute answered though, speaking in her regular voice as she strode deeper into the room, walking down the middle aisle between those glass cases.

  “…It means they are building machines of us now, little brother,” she said, her voice cold, stripped of anything but hatred. “It means the humans have found a new excuse to kill even more of our kind. We will now light their homes. Likely power their refrigerators…”

  Kirev felt the hated seething off her like a physical force.

  Still, he could make almost no sense of her words. He looked back at Wreg, who was peering into one of the glass-enclosed cases nearer to the elevator. When the older seer looked up, he glanced at Venai, who had gone pale, Kirev realized.

  He decided to keep his mouth shut for now, if only because he wasn’t sure he could deal with his own emotional reactions if he were to understand fully. Now was not the time, he told himself. He could ask them all the questions he needed later.

  Even so, he found himself moving closer to one of those glass cases himself. Still gripping his gun in both hands, he moved until he was alongside it, peering in with his gun still aimed forward if towards the floor. Once he’d focused through the glass window, however, he stopped, blinking down at what he could see through the transparent pane.

  Whatever it was, it had living light.

  Kirev’s eyes followed the thing’s aleimic field, as it moved liquidly around the small cage. It did look like metal, but it moved like some kind of sea creature…or like the wall had upstairs. Undulating along the bottom of its metal and glass cage, it emitted a faint form of distress, primitive, but noticeable enough that Kirev felt the emotion deep in his gut.

  “Gaos,” he breathed, staring down at the thing.

  He could feel it now, some remnant of consciousness, like a part of it had been stripped from its host, leaving only the bare motor functions of its light behind.

  “Gaos…” he said again, then burst out, “Who would do this? How could any creature do something so obscene?”

  “Fucking humans would,” Tan muttered, giving him a dark look.

  Kirev had nothing to say to that. He couldn’t be sure if he agreed even. Somehow, to ascribe this to human nature was something his mind couldn’t accept, either. Something darker lived here. Something unseen, that seethed out of these very walls.

  He was still staring into the case, trying to control his breathing, when Wreg caught hold of his arm on the other side. Kirev flinched violently as Wreg caught hold of the right one, which was still sore as hell from being shot.

  Wreg immediately released him, holding up his hands.

  “Sorry, brother!” he said, his light exuding apology. “I’m very sorry! But do not look in there anymore. It will do you no good right now.”

  Staring at his face, Kirev tried to make sense of his words, still panting from the shock to his light and body from when Wreg caught hold of his hurt arm. Then, glancing back inside the glass case a last time, he found himself hearing the other seer. He nodded, tearing his eyes off the mewling thing inside that glass case.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, looking back at Wreg. “Yes. All right.”

  Wreg’s expression remained taut as he continued to assess Kirev’s body and light.

  Looking at him, Kirev realized the seer was worried about him. He was afraid Kirev would crack up, that they’d put him through too much for one evening, between being shot and now this and it being his first real field op since they’d brought
him on board. Kirev could almost feel Wreg’s nerves as he scanned Kirev’s light, his awareness of how young he was, how he might have been pushing his luck allowing him to come inside here, how these machines would test the emotional stability of any seer.

  Kirev firmed his jaw, meeting his gaze directly that time.

  “I’m all right, sir,” he said, his voice decisive. “Really. I’ll take your advice.”

  That time, after a faint pause, Wreg’s expression cleared.

  “Good,” he said. His dark eyes flickered with worry again, even as he gestured towards the boxes. “It is no reflection on you, brother…I promise.”

  Kirev shook his head. “I didn’t take it that way, sir. It’s good advice. I’ll take it.”

  Wreg nodded again, not speaking that time.

  Touching Kirev carefully on his unhurt shoulder, he walked past him then, gesturing for Kirev to follow. He spoke to all of them as he began making his way through the middle of the room, but Kirev still felt the male’s attention focused the most on him.

  “Take imprints of whatever you can,” he told the others. “But we cannot spend much time here. We need to press on. There is a more sophisticated version of this up ahead…it is what the human military, as well a SCARB, have the most interest in. It is why we are here, too.”

  “More sophisticated?” Ute said warily. “More sophisticated in what way?”

  Wreg shifted the direction of his gaze without slowing his graceful steps.

  “It is being used as a brain, sister,” he said, blunt. “Inside one of their more sophisticated computational devices. They think this will solve many of their issues around data processing speeds and storage.”

  Ute frowned.

  She didn’t speak however, but continued to follow him deeper into the room.

  They all followed Wreg now, walking among the glass cases in an uneven line as they aimed for the back wall to the low-ceilinged room. Only a few of the seers still peered in the glass cases as they passed, grimacing at whatever they saw or felt there. Tan seemed to look at every single case he passed, Kirev noticed. So did the seer in the back, a tall, blue-eyed male named Jorag who had not been with them when they were at Sutro Heights.

  He’d met them at the gate outside the Black Arrow research complex, along with a female seer named Neela whose light had been so sharp and structured it made Kirev nervous. Neela was up top now, watching over the security station with another male seer. A third male with light almost as sharp as Neela’s walked on Kirev’s other side now, not looking at anything but his direct line of sight, his hands gripping a military-looking rifle.

  Kirev kept his eyes carefully in front of him too, apart from his few glances at his fellow seers. He also held his light more closely wrapped around his physical body than he perhaps ever had in his life. He pulled it so tight around himself it nearly hurt to hold it there, but he didn’t loosen his grip. He didn’t want to feel so much as a whisper of the consciousness of any more of those things inside the glass cases.

  They reached the other side of the room in a very long-feeling handful of minutes.

  Once they had, Kirev realized the wall looked strange, almost like the white one had on the floor above. This one shone a strange, pale, metallic green color however, almost like jade.

  That time, Wreg himself peeled off his gloves and placed his hands on that wall. As he did, Kirev watched his light.

  It occurred to him then that Wreg was talking to whatever it was.

  He was using his light and the Barrier to talk to the actual wall.

  Even as the realization hit him, the wall rippled, as if responding to something Wreg had said. Before Kirev could ask the question, a panel appeared on the wall.

  Inside that panel, a keyhole appeared.

  That hole was round, with tiny, needle-like spikes, making it look like a small sun.

  Kirev stared, watching in disbelief as the shape formed itself out of nothing, right next to where Wreg’s bare hands pressed against the mirrored material. He continued to stare, unmoving, as Wreg fished the key Kirev had given the him out of his inside jacket pocket. He fitted it into that lock and the strange, cylindrical key covered in different-sized spikes slid into the corresponding grooves like a knife through melted butter.

  The door began to open.

  Kirev found he was holding his breath. He exhaled only when he began to feel light-headed, and by then the other seers were already filing into the dimly-lit room ahead of them.

  He could see lights flashing to either side, like distant stars.

  Otherwise, the space appeared to be totally dark, with only the light from the room at his back illuminating a splash of floor as the doors opened. That light seemed to stop only a few feet past the door’s entrance, as if blocked by some denser darkness it could not penetrate.

  Kirev heard nothing inside. Smelled only dust and faint whiffs of bleach.

  He was still standing outside the door, breathing too hard, when a hand touched his arm gently.

  Kirev jumped.

  “Come, brother,” Venai said, her voice a bare murmur as she glanced up at him. “It is time to meet this monstrosity the humans have built.”

  Kirev looked down at her, still tense. He saw her sculpted lips pursed in profile, the expression on her face more warlike than he’d seen on her up until then.

  Taking another breath, Kirev nodded.

  Then, gripping her fingers where they continued to clutch his arm, he walked them both through the mirror-paneled door and into that star-filled darkness.

  8

  DOOR

  KIREV FOUGHT FOR air, his back only a few inches from one of the night-sky like walls.

  It felt like a lot of time had gone by since that door first opened.

  Too much time.

  He glanced around at the sharp lights as they winked off and on around him like individual eyes, in patterns neither his aleimi nor his mind could follow. He was sweating through the brown suit, feeling it stick the material to his skin as it soaked through his undershirt and his pants and dress shirt as well as the bandage he wore from Venai’s administering to his wound. The close, overly-warm space had begun to give him a distinctly uncomfortable feeling.

  Next to him stood Rigor and Venai on either side, both of them holding guns while they watched Wreg, Ute and Tan work. The latter three seers had been trying to communicate with the wall opposite since they’d all first entered the small space.

  Kirev wondered if they would care if he waited outside. He did not at all feel needed in here.

  “No,” Wreg said, giving him a hard look. “Stay inside, little brother. If we are breached, I don’t want our numbers to be obvious. The field in here should disguise that...”

  Looking at him, Kirev only nodded.

  Even so, he found himself looking wistfully through the opening to the comparatively cooler room filled with those glass cases.

  Several seers stood outside those doors already.

  The tall, black-haired seer, Jorag, remained just on the far side of that opening with two other seers. One of them––another Asian-looking seer who made Kirev think of a less muscular and slightly shorter version of Wreg, complete with tattoos on his bare arms, hands, neck and chest outside of a dark green military-style vest––Kirev had yet to hear a name for.

  The other looked Middle Eastern in coloring and had long black hair, less straight than that of most seers and tied in a seer’s traditional hair clip covered in dark-blue stones.

  Kirev thought he heard Wreg call that one Loki.

  “Are you almost in?” that same seer asked through the open doorway. “We are eight minutes past mission parameters, brother Wreg.”

  “Any word from up top?” Wreg said, without taking his eyes off the flickering lights of the wall, or his hands off one of the dark patches.

  “No,” the one possibly called Loki said. “But it is highly questionable whether the walkie-talkies work down here, brother...under all
of this stone and concrete. They would have to call the telephones down here, and I doubt they would risk such a thing.”

  Wreg grunted, as if in agreement.

  Straightening, the muscular seer placed his hands on his hips, staring at the darkened wall with a frown on his face. Exhaling a bit, he glanced around at the rest of them, before motioning with some frustration at the blinking lights of the wall panel.

  “This one doesn’t appear to be talking, brothers and sisters,” he said in Prexci, giving a more pointed look over his shoulder to Venai. “Thoughts, friends? Loki is right...it is a risk to remain here much longer. Do we simply destroy it and lose the intel on how it was made?”

  “Can you tell anything at all from it, brother?” Venai asked.

  Wreg gave her another direct look, his hands still on his hips.

  “Enough to know it’s alive, like those things out there,” he said, motioning towards the open door gracefully with one hand. “Enough to know that much more of the original being remains...it is structured in a way that is much more sophisticated than anything like this I have ever seen. Even during the war.”

  “How much more?” she said stiffly.

  Wreg turned that time, facing her directly. “Can you not feel the light field, sister?”

  “Of course,” Venai said, clicking at him. “Enough to know we should be able to communicate with it. I am wondering why you cannot. Why would it have loyalty to those beings who did this to it? During the war that was never the case. The machines were always willing to speak to us...even when they had human masters.”

  Wreg shrugged. “It cannot be coaxed like the others,” he said, matter-of-fact. “I do not know why. Except that the machines we came across during the war were said to have been designed originally and built by Syrimne...using only the parts of dead seers. It is unknown how this one was built, but we can assume that the humans were not so...gentle. And that perhaps the humans themselves might have different philosophies in their programming...and the machines might have different levels of gratitude to all living beings as a result.”