Testing Grounds (On Dangerous Grounds Book 1)

by G. Allen Wilbanks

  In the instant he looked aside, the light was on top of him. The railing came to an end, and Leon launched through the opening into the dazzling white radiance.

  CHAPTER 2

  Leon sprawled face down on the ground, his eyes squeezed tightly shut against the surrounding glare. Even closed, they stung from the sudden exposure to light after so much time in total blackness. He did not move for several seconds, letting his vision adjust and mentally conducting an inspection of his body to be sure that he had not injured anything during his abrupt landing. Nothing seemed to hurt. That was good.

  He curled the fingers of his hands, flexed his feet, and rolled his shoulders. There were no twinges of pain or other warnings of anything bruised or broken. He did, however, notice a strangely familiar sensation under his hands and against his right cheek where it pressed against the ground. The surface he landed on felt rough, although not abrasive, and it had some give to it like it was made of a thin, flexible padding. If he didn’t know better, he would swear he was lying on a plush shag carpet. But that was ridiculous. Wasn’t it?

  Leon was in a parking garage. At least, he had been in a parking garage when this bizarre journey started. He expected to land on concrete, or some similar cold, hard, and unforgiving surface. That would be the normal, reasonable conclusion to a fall. Leon forced himself to mentally reassess what was happening to him, realizing that the moment he had discovered he was stuck to that handrail and spiraling into the bowels of the Earth all expectations of any sort of normalcy should have already gone right out the window.

  Sliding his hands beneath his chest, Leon pushed up to his knees and opened his eyes. The light remained too harsh for comfort. He squinted and blinked rapidly, trying to let his vision adjust enough to see his surroundings. Tears blurred the edges of what little he could see. Lowering his head, he stared at the ground between his knees, avoiding any direct glare while allowing the view around him to slowly resolve. To his amazement, the first thing he saw really was carpet. He was kneeling on a thick, shaggy, white rug.

  Leon placed a hand back to the floor and raked his fingers through the fibers in disbelief.

  “What the hell?” he asked himself, muttering out loud.

  “It’s a right kick to the balls, ain’t it, lad?” asked a voice from somewhere to Leon’s right.

  He cried out in surprise, rocking back onto his heels and snatching up his backpack from where it had fallen on the ground next to him. He hugged it against his chest protectively. Leon looked toward the source of the voice and saw a man looming over him, gazing calmly down with an expression of amusement on his face. The stranger was tall, several inches over six feet, and he wore a tight, baby blue t-shirt that showed off a muscular chest and shoulders. Jeans and a heavy pair of brown work boots with the laces untied completed the outfit. His hair was short and spikey, dyed a white-blonde, although darker brown roots were visible closer to his scalp. On his face was a similarly dyed goatee.

  “Wh-who are you?” Leon demanded, trying to sound in control of himself. His voice cracked and squeaked, betraying the underlying panic. “Why did you bring me here? What do you want?”

  The man raised his arms and held out two large hands toward Leon, palms outward. “Whoa, whoa. Slow down, lad. I haven’t done a bloody thing to anyone. We’re all stuck here, same as you.”

  “We?” asked Leon, taking his first good look around.

  He was in a closed room, with solid walls on all sides and no doors or exits to be seen. The interior was massive, easily a hundred feet along each side and climbing twenty feet up before reaching the ceiling. Shelves and racks covered each windowless wall, every one of them overflowing with miscellaneous items and debris. Leon could see work tools and weapons gathered beside articles of clothing and what at first glance appeared to be kitchen utensils. There was no furniture. The floor around Leon remained completely open except for one corner to his left where someone had packed the area with a row of chests and bureaus. Leon presumed these containers would hold an additional assortment of puzzling bric-a-brac. The bizarre décor left him with the impression that he had been deposited in someone’s personal den or library, but one that also had the elements of a warehouse and a workshop built in.

  As he gawked at his surroundings, he realized the man beside him was right. There were others in the room, all standing around in various stages of shock and confusion. At a quick count, Leon identified five other people, and two other…

  Not people.

  Against one wall of the huge building huddled two creatures Leon had never seen before. One of the things was incredibly tall – over seven feet by his estimate – while the other barely reached five feet in height. The shorter being appeared more slender than its companion as well. Other than their size discrepancy however, they were both identical. They were insect-like, covered in a mottled yellow and brown exoskeleton that appeared to be part of them rather than a covering or any sort of artificial armor. Four, rainbow-colored, compound eyes perched at the top of their heads, a larger pair placed high and on opposite sides of the skull, and a smaller pair lower down centered more toward the front. Shiny chitinous plates formed the rest of the beings’ sharp-edged, angular heads. Frighteningly effective looking mandibles protruded low on the creatures’ faces, slowly opening and closing in a side-to-side movement. They reminded Leon uncomfortably of a picture he had found in one of his textbooks of the magnified mouth parts of a wasp.

  Both were bipedal, standing on a pair of thick legs that bent in odd directions. An upper joint protruded forward, operating like a human knee, but there was a second joint lower down that moved backward like that of a bird, giving an overall appearance that the leg could collapse like the folds of a bellows. Each creature had four arms, further reinforcing Leon’s insectile impression of the creatures. Two large, double-hinged arms dangled passively from shoulder joints attached high on the torso, while two smaller arms attached lower along the chest moved animatedly as the beings conversed with one another. All four arms ended in a four-fingered hand that operated like a set of pincers, with two fingers moving against an opposing pair.

  The two aliens faced one another and did not appear to be giving any attention to Leon or the other people in the room.

  Leon felt a tingling low in his spine that crawled slowly upwards. He shuddered.

  “Aye,” said the man beside him. “The buggy-lookin’ fuckers give me the willies, too.”

  Without taking his eyes from the creatures at the far end of the room, Leon whispered up to his new companion. “Do you think they’re the ones that brought us here?”

  The man ran a hand along his bleached goatee and eyed the aliens speculatively. He considered Leon’s question. Finally, he shook his head. “I’d like to think so,” he said. “At least then we’d have a few answers. But no. From the way their actin’, I think the bugs got sucked into this mess like the rest of us.”

  “I was the second one in here,” he continued. “Only the naked guy sitting on the floor just there was here before me.”

  Leon looked in the direction the big man indicated and spied an individual sitting on the ground with his back to a wall. He wore only grey-striped boxer shorts and nothing else. The man was Asian, Chinese Leon guessed, although he could not be absolutely certain. He was an older gentleman, maybe in his later 60’s, with sagging skin on his chest and stomach suggesting he had at one time been quite muscular, but time and sedentary habits had long since eroded away his strength. The old man was completely bald except for a fringe of stringy white hair on his temples that trailed around to the back of his head.

  “The rest of you lot have been popping up every ten minutes or so, including our hard-shelled friends over there.”

  “That accent,” Leon commented. “You sound…”

  “Scottish. Aye,” the man confirmed. “Name’s Malcolm. You sound like a Yank, yerself.”

  Leon nodded. “Um, yeah. Idaho. United States. I’m Leon.”

&n
bsp; Malcolm stroked a hand over his goatee again. “Okay, Leon. I’d like to say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but it’s really fuckin’ not.”

  Leon almost laughed at the statement, but he remained too disoriented by their situation to find much humor in anything just yet. Where were they? Why were they here? He had too many questions with no answers.

  “At least we’re both apparently from the same planet,” Leon commented, moving to stand up. Malcolm extended a hand to help, and Leon took it. “Where do you think those two came from?”

  “Not a clue, mate,” Malcolm admitted.

  Leon took another speculative look around the enclosed space. Besides the old man in his boxer shorts, Malcolm, and himself, there were two other human beings in the room. One appeared to be a man from somewhere in the Middle East. He had dark brown skin, with black hair shaved short at the sides and combed straight back over the top of his head. He sported a close cut, neatly groomed beard. Leon figured he was about the same age as Malcolm: 40, or somewhere close to it. The man wore a loose-fitting, white dhoti tied around his waist and legs and a bright maroon kurta that hung to just past mid-thigh. His clothing hung in a manner that suggested there was not a great deal of extra flesh on his skeleton. He was pacing in small circles and nervously puffing on a cigarette, raising small plumes of smoke that circulated and eddied above his head.

  The last person was a girl about Leon’s own age. She appeared Hispanic, although her skin was light to the point of being pale. She had a soft round face with a delicately pointed chin, forming a reverse teardrop shape framed by light brown hair. Her hair was thick and wavy, although not quite enough to be called curly, and she had pulled it back behind her ears into a ponytail that hung to the middle of her back. She was a few inches shorter than Leon, with a small torso and long legs that gave her most of her height. With broad hips and shoulders, she was stocky but not soft, and she carried her weight in all the best places in Leon’s personal opinion. Black tights covered her from the waist down, partially covered by the hanging tails of a white button-up long-sleeve shirt that appeared slightly too snug around the curves of her chest.

  The girl leaned with one shoulder pressed to the wall a few feet from where the smoker continued to pace. She watched the others in the room carefully. Her expressive, dark eyes darted right to left, and the graceful curves of her full eyebrows pulled together in an expression of concerned contemplation. Her stare met Leon’s for a moment then, unhurried, moved on.

  “I don’t get it,” Leon said. “None of us know each other. Some of us aren’t even from the same planet.” He gestured toward the insectile aliens.

  Malcolm clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to hurt and Leon was forced to stagger a step forward to regain his balance. “There’s nothing to get,” the man told him. “It does’na really matter why we’re here. Regardless, one of three things is going to happen.” He held up one blunt finger. “One, we get sent back home. Two, we figure out a way to get ourselves back.”

  “And the third?” Leon prompted when Malcolm didn’t continue.

  “Well, we fuckin’ die here, don’t we? Now, if you don’t mind bein’ alone for a bit, I’m gonna go try to bum a fag off the bloke in the nappies.”

  As Malcolm approached the man in the dhoti in hopes of borrowing a cigarette, Leon considered wandering over to the girl he had noticed earlier. He shifted his backpack to a more secure location over his shoulder but decided at the last moment to stay put. She did not look like she wanted company, and Leon wasn’t exactly certain himself if he should be letting his guard down just yet. He knew nothing about why he was in this room, and anyone else could easily be a part of what was going on.

  Instead, he turned toward the wall closest to him and studied the shelves and items stored there. He did not recognize most of what he observed. There were small objects made of wood, metal, glass, and various unidentifiable substances, each no bigger than Leon’s fist and some as small as the fingernail on his little finger. They looked like gears, like parts of a larger machine, although Leon had no idea what that machine might look like fully assembled or what it might do. Perhaps a professional mechanic could make sense of the array of items, but as a fourth-year physics student, Leon didn’t have a clue.

  He drifted to his right and found four metal rings, each about six inches in diameter and each holding an assortment of shiny metal objects attached through holes or clips. A few of the objects looked like keys, straight pieces of metal with one edge cut into a series of ridges and depressions. The rest eluded Leon’s ability to identify.

  Feeling slightly exposed, since he had no idea who might be a threat to him or when that threat might be revealed, Leon searched for something that could be used for self-defense. He found nothing in his immediate vicinity that met that requirement. He had earlier spotted a large assortment of weapons on the wall nearest the alien creatures but, although they had not yet shown any interest in the items themselves, they casually maintained their proximity to the armaments. He did not know how receptive they would be to him strolling over and selecting lethal items from the wall.

  Leon looked wistfully across the room. There were no guns or bows, or any type of projectile weapons, but there was an amazing assortment of knives, swords, cudgels, clubs, and all manner of wicked looking things with sharp edges or pointed tips. He remained where he was. So far, it appeared that nobody had taken the opportunity to arm themselves, and he did not want to be the one to start a mad rush that would most likely end in mayhem and bloodshed. The occupants of this room were already suspicious enough of one another without bringing the fear of being stabbed into the equation.

  At least Malcolm was having some success, Leon thought. The Scotsman had managed to score a cigarette and was holding the filtered tip in his mouth while the other man held a lighter to the other end. Malcolm puffed a few times to get the cigarette going then took a deep drag and exhaled appreciatively. The two men began to chat companionably.

  A sudden noise filled the air, like the rushing of air through a tunnel although Leon didn’t feel any wind. A flash of blue-green light flickered and died in the middle of the room and Leon’s ears popped from a sudden change in air pressure. The next moment, a new presence appeared in the room.

  A man, another human, lay face down on the carpet roughly where Leon himself had landed a few minutes ago. The man was barefoot, wearing only grey sweatpants and a rumpled, oversized white t-shirt. Short black hair covered his head, looking tousled and unkempt. When he rolled over, he covered his eyes with his arm in reaction to the light, temporarily hiding his face. He looked to be in his early or mid-30’s. The newcomer had wide shoulders, thick arms, and blocky, short-fingered hands. He looked like a man who had stayed physically fit for most of his life but had recently let himself get a bit soft around the middle.

  As he had done with Leon, Malcolm approached the new arrival.

  “Take a second to get your shite together,” Malcolm told him.

  In response, the man on the floor swung his right leg out and swept Malcolm’s feet out from under him. As the surprised Scotsman hit the floor, the newcomer rolled on top of him, pinned him to the ground with his knees, and cocked a fist.

  “Whoa! Wait, wait, wait,” Leon shouted, running over to the two men without thinking about what he was doing. He stopped himself before getting close enough to get sucked into the fight, but he stepped in front of the man in the sweatpants and held his hands out, pleading for him to stop.

  “He got dragged here just like you. We all did. Please, let him up. He wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

  The man held his punch but did not release Malcolm from the ground. When he met Leon’s gaze, there was anger and suspicion in his dark, almond-shaped eyes.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want with me?”

  Leon blinked. The man’s features were Japanese, or maybe Korean, with high cheekbones and a broad nose, but when he talked, he spoke with a recognizably Britis
h accent. The strange contrast threw Leon for a moment, but he quickly recovered.

  “I’m Leon. And we don’t want anything from you. Except, maybe could you let Malcolm go?” He pointed at the big man pinned to the floor, whose face was now screwed into an angry scowl. “None of us know why we’re here. I only showed up in this place a few minutes before you did. Please, just let him up and we can talk.”

  Slowly, his head pivoting to search for other threats, the man rose and stepped away from Malcolm. Malcolm immediately bolted to his feet, his face red and his expression outraged.

  “You, dotty little fuck!” he roared. “I try to help and ye go and do me like that? I should break you in half.”

  Despite his bluster, Malcolm kept his distance and did not meet the stranger’s eyes. Instead, he looked down and began to search the floor. After a moment he bent over to retrieve something from the ground. Leon realized he was reclaiming the cigarette he had dropped when he had been so unceremoniously dumped onto his back. The heat of the cigarette’s ember had charred a small black circle into the carpet, marking where it fell. Malcolm placed the butt in his mouth and puffed a few times.

  “You’re lucky it’s still lit,” he told the stranger, removing the cigarette from his mouth and pointing at the man with the burning end. “Otherwise, you and me would be having some unpleasant words about it.”

  Leon placed himself between Malcolm and their most recent guest. Malcolm stepped away, deciding not to push the issue any further. “What’s your name?” Leon asked, when it was just the two of them.

  “Michael,” the man said, but did not elaborate.

  “Okay. Hi, Michael. I’m Leon. I’m from Idaho, in the United States. Malcolm is from Scotland. I’m telling you that because there is one more really unpleasant shock you have to get through. As far as I can tell, we are all from the planet Earth except for those two over there. They… Well, I don’t think they are.” Leon pointed to the two alien creatures who had remained completely impassive during the confrontation between Michael and Malcolm.