Diary of the Displaced Box Set

by Glynn James

  The platform was about thirty feet wide and ended with a large gaping doorway that opened up to a slope leading down into the darkness. There were footprints in the dirt leading away down the slope.

  I’d hoped to keep the APV. It’s stocked with so many supplies that I could last months, but that was obviously not what was going to happen. My mother didn’t come back to her APV, at least not that I can see. Whatever was down that slope was what she came to find the last time she visited here.

  Now that I come to think about it, it’s strange. Most of the other stations, apart from the last few, had her footprints going backwards and forwards, like she had visited the areas a lot of times, but not this one. Only one set led away, down into the darkness.

  I presume she must have come to the bunker a number of times before finally being forced to flee, and part of me was excited, but I also dreaded what I may find down the tunnel.

  She only went in, not out.

  I’m going to load up one of the trolleys with as much stuff as I can and head down there.

  :: Record Date 01:07:4787 20:11

  Well, that plan didn’t work out so well.

  I got about a hundred yards down the tunnel when the debris started to build up. At first it was just dirt and the occasional pile of broken masonry, and I had no trouble following the footprints as they threaded their way through, but then I came upon the first collapse.

  An entire section of the wall had fallen into the tunnel, nearly blocking the way completely, and the footprints ended at the pile of rubble. I could see there was a small gap in one corner, big enough for me to climb through, but there was no way the trolley was coming with me.

  So there went most of my supplies, unless I get the chance to come back.

  It took me a few minutes to rummage through my stuff, split out what I really needed (mostly food and batteries) and fill up the two rucksacks. I climbed up the rubble, pushed the rucksacks through the gap, and crawled through.

  On the other side, using my headlamp to light the way and already missing the bright lights of the trolley, I found the footprints once more. The collapsed tunnel continued for about thirty yards, at which point the slope ended in another bunker door similar to the entrance I’d found at the bottom of the maintenance shaft.

  The door was wide open and led into what looked like a small foyer of some sort. The room was still large, easily forty feet across, with a crumbling counter opposite the entrance. More debris littered the floor, and I could see holes in the walls that looked like blast marks. A battle had taken place here, leaving the whole area a crumbling ruin of collapsing walls and broken furniture, but as I examined all three rooms coming off the main entrance I could tell that whoever fought here did so a long time ago, way before my mother came here.

  Her footprints were all over the place, leading from one room to another. In the first room, off to the right, was the largest room, and I would say it was a supply storage of some sort because there was shelving lining every wall, most of it still packed with boxes and crates covered in dust. In the centre of the storage was a makeshift campsite. Boxes taken down from the shelves were built up to surround the spot that was littered with empty ration packages and a curled line of cabling my mother must have plugged into something, maybe a heater, but whatever it was had gone with her.

  The second room was an office, though it had been turned over and destroyed. Most of the furniture was broken, except for a large table that had been dragged into the middle of the room. Papers and books were stacked up on it, along with all manner of documentation. A single chair nestled underneath the table. I glanced down at the papers strewn across the cracked, scratched surface and spotted one piece of paper that my mother must have looked at last. A large red circle was scrawled around a bunch of numbers that looked like coordinates.

  And two words in big red letters.

  FOUND IT.

  The last room was the most impressive.

  The room was mostly empty apart from a platform in the middle and a console a dozen feet away from it. Cables snaked and twisted all over the floor, plugged into sockets on the wall. Boxes were stacked against the far wall.

  The platform was the most curious. It looked like a much smaller version of the ones used in Evac, at the staging grounds, to open gateways and transport vehicles and people to other places on expeditions.

  And that made my heart start thumping.

  This was a gateway. A door. A way to travel to other places.

  And although I wasn’t skilled at electronics, I was very familiar with setting up portals after my many outbound trips. Whenever we reached a new world to investigate, we always had to set up our return journey. And that meant taking it with us, packed in boxes, and wiring it up when we got there.

  I knew how to operate one of these.

  :: Record Date 01:07:4787 20:46

  After making three journeys back along the corridor to grab a few things from the APV, I shut the main doors to the complex before I started work, trying to get the gateway going again. Most of the cabling had been pulled out of various sockets and either thrown randomly on the floor, or plugged into entirely the wrong socket on a different box. Was my mother trying to confuse whoever found this? I presume it had been my mother, since she would have been that last person to come here, and the red scrawls on the papers in the other room were her handwriting.

  But why would she mess it all up like that if she wanted me to follow her?

  Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. How could I not have thought of something so obvious?

  I was part way through rewiring it all when it occurred to me that it had been left as it was after my mother last used it. It didn’t make sense, since a lot of the wiring should make the machine inoperable, but she had used it, surely. There I was, putting everything back the way I thought it should be, and it only just occurred to me that she actually used it the way it was. She couldn’t come back afterwards and change it. I’m an idiot.

  I put the wiring back as she had left it, and looked at the activation switch.

  It doesn’t make sense! How could it possibly work? It was either going to do nothing, or blow up, or something worse. Is there worse?

  I finally decided to just flip the switch.

  It wasn’t like I really had much choice, was it?

  There was a satisfyingly loud click and a hum and the thing switched on.

  This is crazy.

  It shouldn’t possibly be working, but it was.

  But that made no difference. There was no glowing entrance hovering in the middle of the platform because the moment the machine jumped to life, an error message appeared on the display unit next to me.

  UNABLE TO LOCK TARGET LOCATION. NO VALID DESTINATION.

  Damn location memory on the box was completely wiped. I guess fifteen years unplugged wore the internal batteries down.

  So I had a working portal but it wasn’t pointing anywhere. I also didn’t have any coordinate records with me to put into the damn thing, so I wasn’t like I was going to get out of the bunker by opening a door to a house or anywhere convenient like that. Anyway, that wouldn’t have helped me find my mother, would it?

  So back to my mother’s notes and the scrawled red numbers.

  Coordinates to whoever knows where.

  :: Record Date 01:07:4787 21:01

  I’m going back to grab one last lot of supplies.

  :: Record Date 01:07:4787 21:22

  I swear I just heard that same hissing noise down the corridor. I’m back out at the APV, near the entrance, with my gun ready and the trolley behind me stacked up with gear.

  I did hear something.

  Looking down both ways I can't see any movement but both directions end in darkness after about a hundred yards or so.

  That GhostThing, whatever it is, has followed me all the way here. I’m sure of it. I was hoping that because I travelled quickly for quite a distance after finding the mining area and seeing the creature there, I might
have left it behind. But that noise was the same noise it made when I saw it down the corridor near the Mineral Depot, I’m positive of that. It had to be.

  But I can’t see anything. There’s no movement.

  Nothing.

  This thing is seriously giving me the jitters.

  If only I knew what it was.

  Strange thing is, when I was in the APV, it was hovering over me and then it left; it didn’t harm me.

  Maybe it can’t? I don't know.

  I still have that horrific thought of the thing crawling all over me.

  I wish I knew what it was.

  I need to get moving, need to get back inside the area down the corridor, maybe check if I can seal one of those doors. Then maybe it won’t get through.

  :: Record Date 01:07:4787 21:35

  Okay. I’m back at the portal area and locked in, now. The outer doors do lock, which was probably a good idea, anyway. Even if it doesn’t keep out the GhostThing it will delay the Vigilants when they get here.

  I’m going back over what I found of my mother's notes, which are quite extensive. If only I had the time to go through them properly. Whatever happens now, I’m taking them with me, so that I can at least try to understand when I have the time to stop and read them without worrying about being hunted down or haunted by some ghost.

  I put the coordinates in, the ones my mother scrawled next to the red writing, and fired up the portal. With a hum, it appeared there, right in front of me.

  An actual portal entrance to somewhere.

  But where did it lead? What if my mother stepped through and died? What if it went into solid rock, or a thousand feet in the air? Or worse, some planet without atmosphere? She was sure she got the coordinates right, or so the big red words suggest, but how am I supposed to know if she did?

  I could have come all this way only to die the same way she did.

  It’s the setup of the machine that has me worried. It’s all wrong. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

  :: Record Date 01:07:4787 21:56

  I just spent the last half an hour going back over the notes and everything else written down again, trying to convince myself that this won’t be suicide.

  I’m no more convinced than I was, but I’m going to do it anyway.

  You see, they got through. The doors are open and Vigilants are everywhere.

  Just as I expected they would.

  If I’m honest, I didn't expect them to take quite so long to do it, but they’re in.

  I’d been too busy trying to follow my mother’s notes, hoping to come to the same conclusion she had about the coordinates, but I have no idea what any of it means. I wasn’t a portal tech and she had been. Well, I’d finally decided that whether she was right or not, I still had to go, when there was movement on the vid cam in the corner of the room.

  Let me clarify. These terminals that I’ve been stopping at along the tunnels are security outposts – or were. I figured that much out myself. There was one of them in the corner of the office that my mother had turned into her research room, already fixed on the inner door like she had watched it too. Though I don’t suppose she had the same worries. It’s not like they followed her down here.

  Anyway, it was pointed towards the inner door, and I saw them take the damn thing out. It must have been some form of arc drill, a heavy duty laser. Something like that would have taken ages to set up. But I had no way of knowing because when I changed the camera view, hoping to see inside the vehicle bay, I found all the other camera views that I’d been using to spy on them were no longer operating. I’d been busted.

  And now they were in the bunker. My time was now finite.

  It was with these thoughts that I heard the hiss behind me.

  I spun round, turning away from the terminal, to look straight into the dark, floating mass, barely a foot away from me. I tried to take a step back, but hit the desk with the terminal on it. I reached for my gun but realised it was on the other side of the room, on the desk where I put it. Stupid.

  My heart was thumping again, thudding even harder than it had been when I ran from the thing the last time.

  Then I took a deep breath.

  I couldn’t help it. It was a natural reaction. Nowhere to run, need to grab my gun, deep breath.

  There was a brief burning pain in my chest, and then the pain was gone, but at the same time the entire bulk of the gaseous cloud floating in the room just inches from me, was disappearing, being sucked in as I breathed in. I staggered again, but this time to my side, my head swimming, dizzy. The cloud was gone.

  It was inside me.

  I coughed, retching, but there was nothing stopping me breathing. I still thought I would die, that the gaseous form would choke me, but nothing happened. I fell to my knees, grabbing my throat to feel if there was anything wrong there, but there was no pain. The dizziness abated, and I stood up, shocked.

  I'd swallowed the damn thing.

  “That's better,” said a voice.

  I lifted my gun, spinning around the room, searching for the intruder, but there was no one there.

  There was a laugh, soft but cheerful, almost mocking, but again I could see no one.

  “Stop panicking,” said the voice. It was a woman’s voice, young, maybe a few years older than me, at a guess. Maybe younger. I couldn’t tell. What I could tell was that it was coming from nowhere.

  “Where are you?” I shouted.

  “Um…inside you,” replied the voice. “Don't worry. I’m sure this is perfectly safe. I think.”

  I staggered again, unable to rid myself of the crawling sensation all over me. The thing was inside me.

  And it was talking?

  “You’re in…” I stammered.

  “Yes,” said the voice. “Yes. Come on. Let’s get this bit over with. This is where you freak out and scream or something, right? I probably would, to be honest. So go for it. Get it all out. Let’s consider this therapy.”

  I felt like screaming but didn’t. “Who... What are you?” I asked.

  “What am I?” replied the voice. It sounded annoyed, insulted. “What? I’m not a thing, you know.”

  “W—who are you?” I asked. How was it talking?

  “Ilya,” said the voice. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Ilya. What was that? My head was spinning, confused.

  “What?”

  “Ilya,” replied the voice.

  “Ilya,” I replied.

  There was a pause.

  “Well?” asked the voice.

  “What?”

  “What’s your name, you fool. Oh, God. Did I find an idiot? All this time, waiting, and when I finally find someone, it’s an idiot.”

  My brain was spinning, unable to catch up. “I’m not an idiot,” I replied. “I’m Connor.”

  “Connor. Nice to meet you,” said the voice in my head called Ilya.

  “Connor Halldon,” I said.

  Another pause.

  “Woah. Say that again, buddy,” said the voice.

  “Say what?” I replied. I looked around, my vision clearing, no longer flooded with darkness. I spotted a chair a few feet away and stumbled to sit on it.

  “Connor Halldon, as in Halldon?” asked the Ilya voice. I thought it sounded mistrusting.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Like, Halldon, as in James Halldon, Joshua Halldon, all those folks.”

  “Yes,” I replied. “James Halldon was my great…erm…great-grandfather. Or something like that.”

  “Something like that?” replied the Ilya voice. “You’re all famous and it’s just something like that?”

  “I’m not famous,” I said. “I guess he was.”

  “Oh, sure he was,” said the Ilya voice.

  “You’re talking in my head,” I said. “I’ve gone mad.”

  “No, you’re not mad. But yes, I’m really in here,” said the voice. “Oh, unless a side-effect is that it sends you mad. I never thought of that. Hmm.”

 
“You have to get out,” I said.

  “Ah. Problem with that is I didn’t know I could get in in the first place,” said the Ilya voice. “And I have absolutely no idea how to get out.”

  I turned to look back at the terminal. It was still on, and as I flicked through the various camera views, trying to take my mind off my intruder, I saw Vigilants hurrying around the rooms of the storage area that I had found.

  I cursed.

  “Not friends of yours, then?” asked the Ilya voice.

  It can see out of my eyes?

  “No,” I replied. I decided I wasn’t going to let my mind completely leave me, so I would keep the conversation with this Ilya thing to a minimum.

  :: Record Date 01:07:4787 22:26

  “Come on. I know you're angry with me,” said the Ilya voice.

  I was ignoring it, trying to figure out how long it would take the Vigilants to get here. Two days, if they are fast, so I had time, but I also had problems other than this thing in my head.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” it said. “But it’s not like it wasn’t your fault, really. I mean, I didn’t know you were going to breathe me in like that. I was as surprised as you.”

  “Can you just please stop talking?” I asked.

  I must be going mad. I’m talking to it now. I keep telling myself that, but I know it's not really true. This thing in my head was real, but for it to have a name and a voice is… I don’t know what it is.

  Vigilants are now moving throughout the outer areas of the complex. I brought up the security cameras near the entrance to this smaller area after I'd sealed the main doors. I know those doors won't keep them out for very long when they do finally make their way here. But I’ve got to try.

  I’ve already decided I’m going through the portal, especially since I’ve already thrown a lot of my gear through, but the problem is where it leads to. That bit will be what it will be, but when I go through I don’t want the Vigilants following me.

  I have to figure out how to stop them.

  I have no explosives. I can’t wreck the machines before using them, because it won’t work for me to pass through.

  After some thought, I set the security camera to rotate swiftly through as many cameras as I could find, and sat watching it for a while.