Modern Rituals

by J. S. Leonard

  “That sits as a dome over the school and forest, like a big snow globe,” Trevor said. “It doesn’t extend much further into the ground. We’ll pass under it. In fact, we should be doing that just around the bend up there.”

  James wrestled with how Trevor made heads or tails of the passages—they appeared identical to his untrained eyes.

  “There should be a connection nexus there as well—we can finally free ourselves of these boring tunnels,” Trevor said and sighed.

  “As long as there aren’t any serial killers or ghosts, I couldn’t care less where we end up,” James said.

  “True, that,” Trevor said.

  The corridor widened, doubling in height and width. Above them, a riveted, concrete conduit about the size of a semi-truck ran perpendicular to the ceiling. A cool staleness chilled the air.

  “There’s the thermal projection unit,” Trevor said, pointing at the conduit. “Believe it or not, that concrete box runs the circumference of the facility. See that large fan positioned in the center? That’s one of the cooling units—it’s filled with liquid nitrogen and jet turbines. It can freeze a room to negative two-hundred Celsius, though it keeps the thermal mesh at a steady thirty degrees.”

  James performed the mental math, furrowing his eyebrows.

  “That’s insane,” he said.

  “Magnus exists in a different reality from the rest of the world,” Trevor said.

  “You think?” James said.

  “I’m not following—but I’ll take your word for it,” Olivia said.

  As they passed under the thermal mesh division, the corridor returned to its original size. They turned a corner and ran into a thick, metal door.

  “This is the nexus intersection. Through here is a bridge to Una Corda’s campus,” Trevor said. He looked at each of them. “Listen, we’re going to be discovered at some point—it’s inevitable. Just follow my lead when the time comes. They’ve probably discovered our location trackers and are scouting the tunnels. We bought ourselves a little time, as the nexus is the last place they’ll start looking within Facility 7—plus there are a few blind spots we can stick to.”

  “You said a bridge?” James said.

  “Here’s a fun fact about Facility 7: it’s miles underground,” Trevor said.

  “Come again?” James said.

  “The school, the forest—it’s all underground,” Trevor said.

  “But we were outside. We saw the sun and moon,” James said. “And no stars…”

  “You thought you saw the sun and the moon,” Trevor said. “They were holographic projections on the thermal mesh. Everything is artificial and self-contained. When I said it was like a snow globe, I was being pretty literal. Facility 7 is a large sphere—the top half contains the ritual grounds, and the bottom half is filled with all the parts to make the top half go.”

  “I don’t believe you,” James said.

  “No? Follow me,” Trevor said. He opened the metal door and entered a hallway.

  Where the service tunnels had lacked finish—where grime-slicked halls dissuaded the most eager explorers—this place invited them in with machined aluminum and warm, sun-colored lighting. Geometric patches of thick, white vinyl lined the walls in appealing patterns, and embedded into these were head-shaped windows that lined the hallway’s length like portholes on a submarine. The pristine nature of the passage coupled with the decorative patches reminded James of a starship in a sci-fi movie—he rushed to a window, cupped his hands over it and saw only black.

  “I can’t see anything,” James said.

  “Keep walking,” Trevor said. “I’ll show you.”

  They did as he said, trekking along for several minutes before Trevor stopped and peered through one of the windows himself.

  “Have a look,” he said.

  James, Colette and Olivia each chose a window and brought their faces close to the polycarbonate glass. What James saw transformed his understanding of reality.

  A planet-sized mechanical globe rested in unending darkness. Just as Trevor had said, a translucent dome—the thermal mesh—composed the sphere’s top half, under which the school stood centered and surrounded by a vast forest. Their position offered a bird’s-eye view, looking down and into Facility 7, and while the top hemisphere did remind James of a snow globe, the bottom half was more like half a Death Star or a spherical space station, where thousands of bridges and conduits and cables and cords and wires crisscrossed massive trusses and pinions that spanned from every angle—James wobbled and grew dizzy trying to determine where form met function. An enormous mechanical arm fixed to the top of the globe held the sphere around its equator like giant fingers holding a giant marble.

  “This…that…that’s where we were?” James said. “It’s huge.”

  “It’s like a tiny planet,” Olivia said.

  Colette’s face melted against the glass. She punched the wall.

  “It’s all true!” she said. “My God—it’s all true!”

  “Yup,” Trevor said. “See that large arm? That projects the sun and moon onto the thermal mesh. It also retrieves other facilities.”

  “I’m sorry,” James said, turning toward Trevor. “Retrieves other facilities?”

  “Yes,” Trevor said. “This is Facility Seven, remember? There are hundreds of these facilities, each tailored to ritual requirements.”

  “Why would you need to swap facilities?” he said.

  “Look down.”

  They did. James experienced the same vertigo he had when he’d saved Olivia from falling through the air duct panel—the distance between him and the darkness felt bottomless. His eyes adjusted. A faint wisp of light formed in the recesses of the massive cavern’s floor.

  “There’s something…” he said, squinting. His breath fogged the panel’s glass.

  “There is indeed,” Trevor said. “Amida, to be exact—well, a chamber containing his blood. He feeds on those sacrificed in the ritual. Proximity is important—he’s exactly one mile beneath the facility.”

  “Surely what we’re looking at isn’t mobile?” Olivia said.

  Trevor grinned. “Oh, it’s mobile all right. You should see the warehouse for these things. It’s its own little universe,” he said. “But yes, that mechanical arm is used for transport. Only one ritual may occur at any given time. This is a contract among the Gods, who also dictate the setting for a ritual. We have every configuration imaginable, from schools—as you see here—to recreations of entire cities, volcanic islands, underwater civilizations, ruins like Machu Picchu, industrial complexes, shopping malls, amusement parks, and yes, even a cabin in the woods.”

  A vision appeared before James: an immense robotic arm grasping and dislodging the sphere as a hand would carry a tennis ball. This oversimplification then met the immense reality staring at him through the window and his brain exploded into pieces.

  “Anyway, enough idle chat. We need to move,” Trevor said.

  James stayed transfixed on the spherical monstrosity, then jostled his head with a quick neck snap.

  “Sorry guys, I know it’s a hell of a sight, but we need to go. Now,” he said.

  Blinking away the blurred gunk formed from fixating without blinking, James turned toward Colette. Purple and red smeared her eyes—it was difficult to tell if she was frightened, sad, amazed or a nasty combination of them all.

  Trevor led them to the end of the nexus bridge. “We’re about a mile from the facility now.” They stopped in front of a pair of metal doors with long horizontal handles. Trevor pushed the left door open, stuck his head in the gap and glanced around. All clear. He held open the door and waved Olivia inside first, then Colette. James followed last.

  Once they moved beyond the nexus’ threshold, Trevor said, “Welcome to Una Corda. You were unconscious the last time you were here. Come to think of it, I doubt we’ve ever had conscious participants on campus before. Congratulations—you’re the first.”

  “The honor is all
yours, Trevor,” James said, examining the new area. “Are all the hallways in this place so…aluminum? I feel like I’m inside a perfectly machined tin can.”

  “Pretty much. Though it’s an aluminum-aerogel-carbon composite. It can withstand an enormous impact while keeping the weight low,” he said and tugged on James’ shirt, beckoning him to follow.

  “The way I see it, we have maybe five minutes until they drop on us,” Trevor said as they walked. “There are three potential exits from this area. I’m not fond of where two of them lead, so we’re going to the chamber elevator—which, unfortunately, only goes down. I remember reading about some ancient canals that run under the chamber—we may be able to safely leave through those,” Trevor said.

  “And if we can’t?” James said.

  Trevor threw James an uneasy glance and kept moving.

  “Great,” James said.

  A crisp, straight hallway retreated from them. Actually, James now saw that it curved ever so slightly to the right, and he guessed if it continued into an eventual loop, its diameter would trounce the Pentagon’s.

  This structure is underground? My God…

  Tingling shivers coalesced beneath his skin. Una Corda: a secret lair of untold size—it dismantled his notions of how the world operated, or rather, introduced to him how Magnus operated the world. He wanted desperately to escape with his memory whole.

  They passed an open door through which lights flittered in clockwork precision. James halted.

  “Wait,” he said. Blinking lights usually meant computer terminals and that might be his ticket out of there.

  “No time, we have to—” Trevor said.

  James rushed through the door.

  “Goddammit. Really James?” Trevor said and followed.

  James glanced around the small quarters. Tall, windowed racks stood in rows and held stacks of computers on which LED strips blinked. Colette sneezed behind James, which alerted him to the frigid air pooling from beneath the racks. James danced around the room until he found what he sought—a laptop lay on a workbench. He hurried over to it.

  “James, what are you doing?” Colette said. “It’s freezing in here.”

  He ignored her.

  “Trevor, can you log in to this laptop?” James said.

  “Yes, but I don’t think it’s—”

  “Just do it, Trevor,” James said. “You owe me.”

  Trevor sighed. “Fine—move over.” He typed a username and password into the laptop’s login screen.

  “Thanks,” James said, turning the laptop toward him. “What the…? What flavor of Linux is this?” James said after launching a terminal prompt and typing uname -sr into the command line.

  “Magnus has their own proprietary distro,” Trevor said.

  “Figures,” James said and went to work tracerouting an IP Joe Johnston owned.

  “I don’t want to know the kind of firewall you have here, do I?” James said.

  “Who needs a firewall when you command every node driving the Internet? We are the firewall,” Trevor said.

  This impressed James, and it also reinforced the credibility of his idea.

  “All right, let’s see—ooooh what do we have here?” James said, turning to Trevor. “An open SSH session? What kind of IT guys are these?”

  Trevor gawked and palmed his forehead.

  “I swear to the Gods, Magnus needs to vet these guys more—granted, security here is tighter than a gnat’s ass, so there isn’t reason to believe anyone would, you know, just walk in here.” Trevor said. “Hey—what…are you curl’ing an NGINX package? I don’t think it’s a good idea to compile that.”

  James gave him a shush face as if to say, “Who is screwed here? Yea, you and me both.”

  “Just gotta set some IP tables and leave an open port,” James said. “And…traceroute map with port info echoed via a raw email header. Voilá!”

  Backdoor on its way Joe—I hope.

  “Nice work James. Personally, I would have whipped up a quick shell script—”

  “Oh. My. God. Guys—are you nerds seriously flaunting IQs right now?” Olivia said.

  Trevor sniggered. “Like there’s a compari—”

  A man’s voice echoed in the hall outside the door. James ducked into a crevice between two of the larger racks, and the others joined him.

  “So, I told Pam that it’s either me or one of the other half-assed bachelors in this establishment. She slapped me—can you believe it?”

  “Yes. Yes I can believe it, you idiot,” another man said.

  Their silhouettes shaded the doorway.

  “Hey, do you remember leaving the door open?”

  “Yeah, I did. Sorry.”

  “Huh—okay.”

  One of the men walked to the laptop James had just used—its screen displayed a login prompt once again. An enormous pylon—probably holding a fraction of Una Corda’s network servers—blocked James’ view. Trevor mouthed words at them, muted like a silent movie, and gestured at them to move to the door.

  “Hey, you hear that?” one of the men said.

  “Nah.”

  “I swore I hear—”

  Three armed militia bustled into the room. Trevor hustled James, Olivia and Colette back into their hiding space. The two IT geeks jumped to their feet.

  “At ease, gentlemen,” an armed guard said. “Have you seen anyone who shouldn’t be here?”

  The two men breathed heavy.

  “No, sir,” they said together.

  The armed guard held two fingers into the air and placed his hand on his ear.

  “Understood,” he said, then to his men, “Sweep the area.”

  Trevor turned to James, Colette and Olivia, pointed to himself and out the door. Then he made a mad dash for the exit, throwing an elbow into the neck of the guard inspecting the area near them. As the other two guards drew their guns, James moved away from the exit to the rear of the room. He faced the dumbfounded IT techs and put a finger to his lips. They didn’t move.

  James grabbed the laptop off the table, closed it and brought the hunk of grey plastic and metal down on a guard’s head, smashing him to the floor. The remaining guard spun around to face James, but Trevor took advantage of the distraction and placed the guard into a vicious headlock. The guard lost consciousness.

  An awkward silence followed as James applied a cautious toe to the men on the ground and glanced wearily at the IT techs.

  “We weren’t here,” Trevor said to them. “Got it?”

  The men’s heads bobbed in enthusiastic agreement.

  “Good boys,” Trevor said. “Let’s go.”

  They ran out of the room…and into five more armed guards.

  “Follow me—and zag,” Trevor said.

  The three ran behind Trevor, zigging and zagging. The armed guards pursued them, calling in the group’s location. Trevor darted left and swung around, pulling Olivia and Colette into a claustrophobic room. He punched a series of buttons into a panel behind them. Two sliding doors nearly clamped James as the room closed behind him. Gun-toting guards disappeared through the door’s crack.

  “Hey, we made it,” Trevor said, perhaps too casually.

  “Uh…yeah—where are we?” James said.

  “The service elevator,” he said.

  “But it’s so small,” James said. “I thought the chamber elevator would be bigger.”

  “This is a service elevator,” Trevor said, smiling. “Don’t worry, the chamber elevator won’t disappoint.”

  James pushed his heels against the floor to counter the elevator’s descent. Olivia lost her footing and bumped into James. Colette’s face fell into Trevor’s chest—she kept it buried there throughout the ride. Trevor placed his hands on her shoulders and patted them.

  “Long day, huh?” he said.

  James plopped against the elevator’s side and slid to the ground.

  “Yeah, take a quick break—this lift is slow,” Trevor said.

  Olivia col
lapsed beside James, their shoulders resting against each other. James’ eyelids grew weary. He sucked in a deep breath and held it.

  Gotta keep going. We’re almost out of here.

  All too soon, the elevator tilted and settled. A ding, and the doors parted.

  “Nap time’s over,” Trevor said.

  Dry, cold air rushed into the small cabin. It smelled of minerals and dust. James hiked his back up the wall and peered out the doors.

  “What is this place?” he said.

  “We’re in sector four, about a half mile above the chamber and a half mile below Una Corda. A midway point. From here on out, we’re walking through the cavern. The chamber elevator isn’t far,” Trevor said, jamming his elbow into the control console, which splintered into sparks. “That should buy us some time. Come on.”

  A path of leveled rock, smooth and coated in chalk, led from the elevator entrance, and high walls of roughly hewn limestone enclosed them. Hanging bulbs within screened canisters swung from an arced ceiling, providing ample, ghostly light.

  James squinted—up ahead, a blurry face stared back from the end of the corridor. His mind labored to determine its authenticity—or whether his imagination (and sanity) was toying with him. As they neared, the image clarified—a monstrous face, many times James’ height, filled the passage. It wore a grotesque expression: pained eyes staring upward, a mouth curled into a melted groan—and embedded into its gaping lips, like teeth, sneered a stone door inset with intricate carvings of some ancient origin.

  “Well, we’re here. What do you think?” Trevor said.

  “This? Where’s the elevator?” James said.

  Trevor kissed his hand and turned a knob next to the corner of the face’s mouth. The floor rumbled and dust spilled from the eyes and nose as the stone doors retracted from each other in a yawn.

  “Whoa,” James said.

  “After you,” Trevor said to Olivia.

  James followed Olivia. The mouth swallowed him, depositing James in a vast rotunda. A tongue carved into the floor licked their feet as they shuffled into the elevator—it lay center of a circular platform that extended nearly to the walls, divided only by a seam running along the circumference.