The Complex

by Michael Walters

  As he entered, Gabrielle said, ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  Leo felt a sting in his chest. ‘I brought you something to eat.’

  She was lying on the bed, hair damp, her face cleaned up. The blanket was at the bottom of the bed and she had a thin sheet over her. He took the plate to the dresser. When he turned back, Gaby was looking away.

  He examined his fingernails. ‘Gaby, I don’t know what you saw when you came into the garden. But, really, it was nothing.’

  Her mouth had fallen open. He moved around the bed and saw her eyes were closed. He darkened the window and hoped again she wasn’t concussed.

  Back in the kitchen, he was alone. He reached to his pocket for his phone, then remembered it wasn’t charged. He could do something about that. If Art wouldn’t help, he would work it out himself. He sat on the sofa by the front window and took in the view. The week was going quickly. He let its events play over in his mind, then lay back, looking up at the ceiling.

  After a while, Polly came from the garden carrying two buckets, both full of vegetables.

  ‘I picked too much,’ she said, breathing hard. ‘It was all too tempting. But we’ll eat it all over the week, right?’ A curtain of carrot tops spilled down the front of a bucket. She looked strong, like she could work the fields. ‘We could be self-sufficient up here.’

  ‘Sounds rather lovely,’ he said.

  Polly started putting everything out on the table. ‘Lettuce. Tomatoes, of course. Dried garlic. It was hanging in that workspace area. Fresh oregano. There are so many herbs, it’s fantastic. Basil. Onions. Carrots. Cabbage.’

  ‘What on earth do you think they have done to the tomatoes?’ Leo asked, looking at them. They were quivering with liquid, like water balloons.

  ‘They taste amazing. Perhaps they’re modified in some way.’

  ‘Do we know whose place this is?’ Leo said.

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Didn’t Art say?’ Leo picked up an onion and fingered the loose skin. The outer layer came away easily.

  ‘Look, Art only gave me a few days’ notice. That’s how it works.’ Polly changed the subject. ‘Have you found where the power unit is yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Art doesn’t like the idea of you snooping around. But I don’t want to see you stuck here.’

  He loved the idea of being stranded with Polly, just the two of them. It would be so simple.

  ‘I don’t understand Art’s thinking,’ he said.

  ‘Best not to try,’ Polly said. ‘I’ll cook dinner. I need something to do. Don’t tell me where you’re going. What I don’t know, I can’t say.’

  She gave him a piercing look. He wanted to kiss her. She picked up the large kitchen knife from the chopping board, took the bulb of garlic and pressed the flat blade onto it, using her body weight. The cloves fell apart easily.

  ‘Polly,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Go.’

  Leo decided to start in the basement. Having stairs in the kitchen was a fascinating detail, but even more intriguingly, the ceiling was mirrored, so you could watch yourself walk down them. He found it hard to look at his own face, upside-down, without feeling dizzy. He marvelled at the volume of earth that must have been shifted to make this place possible. The window to the water in the pool was a weird extravagance. The basement was basically empty. What was the point of the raised exercise studio floor? What troupe of ballerinas was ever going to use the mirrors or the barre that stretched along them? It was functionally odd. A glitter ball? Was it the architect or their crazed client that had put all this in? The same polished wood floorboards as upstairs covered the expanse down here, stretching sixty metres. There was another room, beneath the hall, like a cloakroom. It felt like a deserted nightclub.

  The pool drew him with flickers of blue and white light on the knots of the oak floor. Through the glass was a glamorous mix of bright tile, water, sunlight and sky. The glass was cold to the touch. Motes drifted in the water like stars and galaxies. The pool surface from below was a shocking blue. His feet were surrounded by moving light and he could imagine the sound of waves on a beach. The tiles set into the pool wall had a familiar pattern that he couldn’t place. Looking at the motes more closely, he imagined the house floating among them, or perhaps in space. They had found many planets now with evidence of life, circling distant stars. Other intelligences too far to contact. Leo hoped humans survived long enough to meet them. More likely, humans would destroy themselves, or let the robots do it for them. It was like a film that he had the briefest bit part in. He just needed the money. It was nothing to do with him at all. Humans were on Mars. Robots were assembling eighty-storey buildings. Perhaps he was dreaming, and his body was in some deep stasis, frozen in a spaceship, travelling between worlds. Why couldn’t it all be a simulation?

  Some darkening at the edge of his vision made him look up. There was a shadow at the poolside, its shape shifting gently. The sun was a muted, pale disc on the shadow’s shoulder. Were they looking down? He couldn’t tell. No, they were looking away. Was it Art? He pitied Art, really, always pounding the water or swinging at tennis balls. He lacked intuition. Feel. It was cool down here, in the belly of the building. Then the shadow was gone.

  His forehead hurt. He reached for his phone again. Damn it. He pinched the skin above his nose as hard as he could bear, then scanned the basement walls. He went through to the room under the hall. There was no furniture, just an empty space and an open doorway to a stairwell. Wait. An opening. It was narrow, camouflaged by the light from the stairwell which cast it in deep shadow. He went to it and a white, harsh light clicked on, revealing a smooth metal maintenance door.

  ‘Now we’re talking,’ he said.

  He tried the door, and it swung inwards. Cold air rolled over him. No lights came on, the light behind him casting a precise shadow of himself onto the dusty concrete floor. The walls were bare breeze blocks. Thick red cables were tied together and attached to the ceiling, running along the wall, around a corner and into darkness. He could just make out the farthest wall. There were no boxes on the walls, but he wondered what was around the corner. And the cables weren’t standard, so what did they connect? He looked up. They went into the house, near the hallway. His skin prickled in the cold. He needed a torch.

  Back in the house’s comforting embrace, he couldn’t see any signs of the red cables. The stairwell was a standard affair, like you’d find at the back of any apartment block, and he climbed quickly to the hall. Next to the toilet there was a narrow door he hadn’t noticed with only a tiny keyhole and no handle. He remembered seeing keys in a kitchen drawer, next to some matches. Oh, and a torch. He clucked with pleasure. There was energy in his step. The tomato sauce gave a soft plop as he passed the hob. He got the bunch of four keys and the torch. One key had a square end and a metal strip running through it. Magnetic lock. Back at the door he pushed the key in and the door clicked, popping inwards a fraction.

  ‘Bingo.’

  It was a long room, with no windows. The lights came on, revealing an industrial-grade server cabinet crammed into the far end. He gave an appreciative whistle. That sort of setup could run a small tower block. He opened the keyboard hatch and the control screen lit up. The bank of green and yellow lights behind the grey glass was familiar. The logs and general settings were in the right place, but the operating system had been modified and there was lots of extra data that he didn’t understand. An error blinked, small and red.

  ‘Another box,’ he said. ‘That makes no sense.’ He looked up at the ceiling, then down at his fingers. ‘What are you hiding, sweetheart?’

  He brought the schematics up on the screen. The maintenance door he had found led to a long corridor that ran for about a hundred metres, before fading out. That would take it into the mountain. It seemed to go under the tennis court. A green and yellow box blinked. He drummed
his fingers on the keyboard, then closed the hatch with a snap.

  He went back to the maintenance door, wondering now why it wasn’t locked. Back in the corridor, the cold air was bracing. He shone the torch at the far wall, pleased at the strong, white beam, and saw marks left by removed noticeboards and coat hooks. He stepped down onto the dusty concrete. Somewhere, through the left wall, was the weight of the water in the swimming pool. When he drove under the West River, he always looked at the ceiling and walls for cracks and running water. It was a childhood fear. He pushed those thoughts away and looked at the cables more closely. They were odd, thick and uneven, almost organic, like a bundle of umbilical cords. He followed them to the turning into the corridor, his shoes scuffing the dust as he walked. He angled the torch around the corner before he reached it, nervous of rats. It was silent apart from his own breathing. Where his light couldn’t reach, the darkness was absolute. Perhaps he should have told Polly where he was going. His heart was beating a little faster than he would have liked. Looking down the corridor he could feel a faint, but definite, breeze on his face. With a last look back at the open maintenance door, he left the light of the house and started walking.

  For a small torch, it was pleasingly powerful. The cables continued their weirdly biological progress ahead of him. He could see ten, perhaps fifteen metres ahead. The torch beam jiggled a little from side to side. Glancing back, the corner was reassuringly lit in the medicinal white of the door light. He kept walking, pushing the blackness back, listening to his footsteps, his breath, the occasional rattle of little stones he caught with his shoes.

  As the schematics had said, the box was there, on the right wall, just past the bottom of a metal ladder. The red cords continued down the corridor, unconnected to the dirty, grey box, which made him wonder if he was on the right track. He followed the ladder up with the torch. It was a narrow climb, ten metres or so, to a closed, circular cover. He was surprised how deep underground he was. Putting the torch in his mouth, he unclipped the box cover, propping it against the wall. He touched the control screen. It was a standard setup, which was a pleasant surprise after the oddness of the house operating system. He grunted, then turned the house tech power on. Everything else was normal. Perhaps a fuse had blown somewhere.

  The air felt heavy. The torch created a bubble of light, his world shrunk to the few metres around him. Every noise he made was deadened by the earth. He put the cover back, then climbed the ladder, torch now in his shirt pocket, pointing upwards. The metal was uncomfortably cold in his hands. At the top, he looked for a mechanism to open the cover, but there was nothing. He pushed with both hands, aware of the drop below. It didn’t budge. He examined the inside of the rim carefully. It should just lift off. It must be the cover he’d seen through the clubhouse kitchen window. Something nagged at him, at the edge of his memory, something unpleasant.

  Unsettled, he climbed down and shone the light both ways along the corridor. The darkness seemed thicker. He couldn’t tell how long he had been down here. He craved the kitchen, conversation, the smell of tomatoes cooking.

  He began to walk back. Behind him, somewhere under the hill, something scraped. He spun around and shone the torch. No, it was his imagination. The darkness was getting to him. He kept walking backwards, unwilling to turn away from the sound, even if it wasn’t real. His torch beam stopped in a block of black. Relax. Mission accomplished. Time for a big glass of Art’s expensive wine. He turned and jogged, wanting to get this over with. The light beam jiggled from one breeze-block wall to the other. The light from the house was only thirty metres away.

  Another scrape. He twisted sharply, shining the light behind him, but not slowing down. There was nothing there. He was following his own footprints. He turned fully, so he was jogging backwards. His eyes were intent on the edges of the torch light. He slowed, not wanting to fall. If the light went out now, he thought he would scream. He was straining to see beyond the beam’s reach. The cone of light didn’t seem as strong. How far was there to go? He glanced back. Fifteen metres, maybe. He was desperate to sprint but didn’t.

  He was sure the darkness was getting closer. He shook the torch, but the beam didn’t waver. It was as if the shadows were expanding into the torch light, sucking it up. All he wanted was to be in the kitchen again.

  As he reached the corner at last, the light from the maintenance door disappeared, and he heard a clear click as it closed.

  ‘No!’ he shouted.

  He ran to the door. His fingers were cold, his breath ragged. It was locked. He turned, shaking, making a noise that hardly seemed like it was coming from him. There was a whisper at the edge of the torch light. The darkness arrived out of the corridor, like a thick blanket snuffing out everything. He tried the door desperately again and banged on it as hard as he could. There was movement in the black – dozens of tiny flickering lights. The air was heavy with a terrible sadness that made him feel weak. His legs felt rubbery. He moaned, a despairing sound that was familiar somehow.

  Then the torch light went out. The blackness was absolute. He was shouting and there was pressure at a point in the centre of his forehead that began to burn, becoming a white-hot spot embedding itself in his skull. He tried to escape it, but something held him. All he could think was he was on an operating table and the anaesthetic had failed and he was going to die from the agony of it.

  He woke curled in a ball, hands and arms protecting his head, his cheek on the cold floor of the house basement. He lay still. There was no sound and no pain. He slowly began to stand, wiping his eyes on his sleeve, relief flooding him. A dream. He touched his forehead. A little blood, not much. He had fallen. He used the wall to steady himself.

  The metal maintenance door was open, but through it came a familiar industrial glow. The floor was clean, polished concrete, with no footprints. He went to the corridor corner and looked down it. The lights were working. He could just make out the ladder and beyond it the corridor continued to a point somewhere deep in the mountain. The power was on.

  He felt sore all over. What the hell had happened? He was already feeling better, but his memory was failing him. There had been darkness. He went to the stairwell, struggling to think straight. He sat on the bottom step, put his head in his hands then touched his scalp again. He was covered in white dust. The blood was drying. He closed his eyes. He imagined the crystals on the lawn and heard their soft, insistent song.

  Stefan: Headset

  Stefan didn’t understand why Fleur was angry with him. He watched her peck hard at the crumbs on her plate with a finger, putting the ones she caught in her mouth. Another breakfast at her desk, although now it was nearly lunchtime.

  ‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do after?’ she asked, not looking up.

  ‘I’m not thinking about it,’ he said, fingering the bottom of his t-shirt. ‘Play tennis.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘My marks are okay,’ he said. ‘The applications I’ve made aren’t back yet.’ He hoped the bland companies his mother had picked out would reject him, but he didn’t want to antagonise Fleur further.

  ‘Who did you apply to?’ she said, her voice precise.

  ‘Science parks in Areas Four and Five. One place in Seven.’ He picked up a pen on his desk and started to doodle a spiral. ‘It doesn’t feel real.’

  ‘Didn’t you get work experience?’

  ‘Is this interview practice, or what? It’s not that easy, you know. I’m in an Area school.’

  ‘Well, mine wasn’t given to me,’ Fleur said sharply.

  He stopped doodling and looked up at her. She was frowning at her empty plate. He went back to his notepad and began to turn his spiral into an eye.

  ‘After your stunt yesterday,’ Fleur said, ‘Daddy told me he wanted to give you a job.’

  He stared at her blankly. ‘Stunt?’

  ‘He was just running
it by me, to see how I would react. That’s what he does.’

  He continued shading the spiral-eye as her words sunk in. A job with Fisher Industries was like winning the lottery.

  ‘He might not ask you,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you take it if he did ask you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Seriously?’ She raised one, ferrety eyebrow.

  ‘It’s purely hypothetical,’ he said. ‘So hypothetically, yes. Possibly.’

  ‘You can’t say yes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If he offers you a job, you can’t say yes.’

  They stared at each other. Her jaw was set, and he was struggling to see how they had reached this point.

  He backed down. ‘Jesus, Fleur. You’re impossible.’

  She put her headphones on and went back to her books. Stunt? He hadn’t even wanted to go in the damn maze. He didn’t understand.

  He drifted to the furthest shelves of the library. He liked the idea of the weight of the mountain above him. This was the History section. They didn’t like to talk about the past at home. Grandad wouldn’t talk about the War. Paperwork, he said. Administration. They had a family joke that he had been a spy, but his grandad was prickly about it. Perhaps history was dangerous. Once, Stefan had pressed his mother about his biological father and she had looked so devastated that Stefan had run out of the apartment. She hadn’t mentioned it again and neither had he.

  He went along the shelves, pulling books out by their spines and letting them fall back. There were lots of general histories of the War and he started flicking through them. His mother had said in the car there had been a military site near here. He moved from book to book.

  ‘Stefan?’ Fleur called.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘It’s okay, I thought I heard something. That’s all.’

  He went to the end of the book shelves and looked back at her. She had put her headphones on the desk and was stretching. She groaned. She was wearing blue dungarees with a short black t-shirt so that, with her arms up, he could see a couple of inches of pale skin. A bracelet fell from her wrist with a rustle. He felt a pang. After her outburst, he had forgotten that she was attractive. Not conventional, a little spiky, but still – attractive.