Curveball Issue 36: The Titan’s Shadow

Part Nineteen: Haruspex Analytics, Upper Floors

The deeper they go, the darker it gets.

Deeper? Jenny frowns as something gnaws at her. Deeper isn’t quite right, but she doesn’t really know why.

She scolds herself for letting her mind wander. Semantics can wait—right now, she needs to focus. The deeper they go, the darker it gets.

The stairwell echoes with their footsteps as they reach the next landing. Street Ronin crouches, his rifle trained on the closed door—a rugged metal door with a thin rectangular window traveling up the top half—separating them from the rest of the floor. Agent Grant stays in the stairwell, watching for anyone coming up or down the stairs.

Jenny keeps below the window’s line of sight, creeping to the door’s right. A subvocalized murmur activates one of her helmet’s fancier sensors, and it quickly scans the hallway beyond.

Nothing. She shakes her head. Street Ronin nods in reply, gestures to Agent Grant, and they proceed down the stairs to the next landing.

The deeper they go, the darker it gets.

It’s not right—it can’t be right. Whatever they’re doing, they’re not going deeper. She grinds her teeth in frustration as she tries to force the thought back. What does it matter? Sure, they’re 20 floors above ground but they’re still going down, and without any windows they might as well be underground. “Deeper” works as well as anything. Why is she so stuck on it?

It’s the darker part that should be bothering her. The fluorescent lights in the stairway are still on, still glowing white—but they might as well be a children’s nightlight for all they actually light the space around them. She squints as she looks down the stairs, noting they were almost at the landing that marked the halfway point between floors. Two floors up, she remembers being able to see the halfway point clearly from the top of the stairs. Not any more—she’s halfway there before she can see the shape of it.

It even darker past the landing (the deeper they go) and Jenny activates a low-light display on her helmet. She turns it off again in irritation—the image is washed out, as if the light were at normal levels.

The stairwell echoes with their footsteps as they reach the next landing. Street Ronin crouches on the landing tile, his rifle trained on the closed door—a rugged metal door with a thin rectangular window traveling up the top half—separating them from the rest of the floor. Agent Grant stays in the stairwell, watching for anyone coming up or down the stairs.

Jenny crouches, keeping below the window’s line of sight, and creeping up to the door’s right. A subvocalized murmur activates one of her helmet’s fancier sensors, and it quickly scans the hallway beyond.

Nothing. She shakes her head. Street Ronin nods in reply, gestures to Agent Grant, and they proceed down the stairs to the next landing.

The deeper they go, the darker it gets.

Her dissatisfaction with the notion of deeper surges up again, and her irritation nearly turns to anger at herself for being distracted by word choices. She’s usually only like this when it comes to her job, when imprecise language creates misunderstanding.

Well, I guess this is my job now too, isn’t it?

She thinks about that for a second. Yes it is—at least for the moment—and she needs to focus on doing it. They’ve reached the midpoint again, and Jenny is gripping the railing loosely with one hand in case she misses a step.

How did it get this dark? And if it’s this dark, why are the lights still shining?

The stairwell echoes with their footsteps as they reach the next landing. Street Ronin crouches on the landing tile, his rifle trained on the closed door—a rugged metal door with a thin rectangular window traveling up the top half—separating them from the rest of the floor. Agent Grant stays in the stairwell, watching for anyone coming up or down the stairs.

Jenny crouches, keeping below the window’s line of sight, and creeping up to the door’s right. A subvocalized murmur activates one of her helmet’s fancier sensors, and it quickly scans the hallway beyond.

Nothing. She shakes her head. Street Ronin nods in reply, gestures to Agent Grant, and they proceed down the stairs to the next landing.

The deeper they go, the darker it gets.

She considers the possibility that if this is her job, and she’s treating it like her job, then it might be appropriate to consider why she’s reacting so strongly to the word “deeper.” She’s reacting, she realizes, the same way she would if she were reading an explanation from an engineer who’d made an assumption that was fundamentally wrong and had based an entire design around it.

Street Ronin stumbles on the stairs ahead of her, just for a moment. She can barely see his hand tighten on the rail for support, then leave it there as they continue down. Her own hand grips the rail. She can’t really feel it through the gloves of her own suit. Just a vague pressure. It’s so dark they can only see a few feet in front of them.

This is wrong. But how?

The stairwell echoes with their footsteps as they reach the next landing. Street Ronin crouches on the landing tile, his rifle trained on the closed door—a rugged metal door with a thin rectangular window traveling up the top half—separating them from the rest of the floor. Agent Grant stays in the stairwell, watching for anyone coming up or down the stairs.

Jenny crouches, keeping below the window’s line of sight, and creeping up to the door’s right. A subvocalized murmur activates one of her helmet’s fancier sensors, and it quickly scans the hallway beyond.

Nothing. She shakes her head. Street Ronin nods in reply, gesturing to Agent Grant.

The deeper they go…

“Stop.”

Jenny blinks in surprise as she realizes the command came out of her mouth. And it is a command: crisp, clear, brimming with authority. Street Ronin and Agent Grant both stop, turning to face her. Neither speak. Both wait.

“Something’s wrong,” Jenny says. “Give me a second.”

Deeper. That’s what I’m stuck on. I’m stuck on the word “deeper,” and I can’t find any rational reason why.

Either she’s become a completely different person in the last twenty four hours—it’s possible, she concedes, given all the crazy things that have happened—or some part of her brain that is treating this as her job has reached a conclusion about the word “deeper,” but hasn’t figured out how to tell the rest of her yet. Option B makes more sense to her, so she quickly reviews every remembered irritation surrounding the word.

Deeper isn’t quite right

Whatever they’re doing, they’re not going deeper

not… going… deeper…

Imprecise language creates misunderstanding.

The problem, Jenny realizes, is that she’s assuming she’s being picky about word usage when she’s actually objecting to the declaration of motion. It’s not that “going deeper” doesn’t accurately describe descending a staircase from the top of a building in Manhattan, it’s that the phrase assumes they’re moving to begin with.

And they’re not. They’re not moving at all.

The darkness surrounding them disappears. Jenny blinks involuntarily as the near total darkness is replaced with cold fluorescent light, only to realize her eyes don’t hurt.

She stands in a stairwell landing, facing a rugged metal door with a thin rectangular window traveling up the top half. Street Ronin stands to her left, hands at his side, his rifle laying on the floor at his feet. Agent Grant stands to her right, eyes glazed, expression remote.

“Hey.” This time, Jenny’s voice doesn’t sound crisp, or clear, or full of any kind of authority of any kind. It’s cracked, and hoarse, barely above a whisper. Her tongue feels thick and swollen. “You guys OK?”

They don’t respond. She can’t see Street Ronin’s features under his visor, but Grant doesn’t react to her voice at all. He simply stares into space, blinking occasionally.

“Hey!” Her voice cracks as she tries to speak louder. “Ronin! Grant! Snap out of it!”

Still no reply. Whatever weird place they were in a few seconds ago, Jenny is the only one who managed to get out. And, she realizes with alarm, that may only be temporary: the room is steadily growing dark.

Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap

Jenny grabs Street Ronin and Agent Grant, each by an arm, and does her best Scrapper Jack impression by kicking the metal door with all her strength. It doesn’t shatter, but the frame does, and with a pop and screech of tearing metal the door flies down the floor’s main hall until it topples over about a third of the way in.

Jenny heaves, throwing both men forward. She’s certainly strong enough, but they aren’t cooperating, and dead weight is awkward to control. Agent Grant slams into Street Ronin just before they pass through the door, causing the armored man to clip the door frame with his shoulder. Jenny winces as his shoulder takes out a chunk of sheet rock before he crumples into the carpet just on the other side. Grant goes a little farther, hitting an office door then collapsing into a heap about five steps past Street Ronin.

The deeper they go, the darker it gets.

Jenny can barely see. The stairwell echoes with their footsteps as they reach the next landing. Street Ronin crouches on the landing tile, his rifle trained on the closed door—a rugged metal door with a thin rectangular window traveling up the top half—separating them from the rest of the floor. Agent Grant stays in the stairwell, watching for anyone coming up or down the stairs.

No. That’s not right. She kicked down the door. She threw Street Ronin and Agent Grant through the door. They aren’t there any more, so why is she—

Jenny crouches, keeping below the window’s line of sight, and creeping up to the door’s right. A subvocalized murmur activates one of her helmet’s fancier sensors, and it quickly scans the hallway beyond.

Nothing. She shakes her head. Street Ronin nods in reply, gesturing to Agent Grant.

The deeper they

Someone shoves her, hard, and then she’s flying through the broken doorway, sprawling on the floor next to Street Ronin. The air in front of her shimmers and Agent Grant appears, bent over, wheezing and coughing.

“What… the… fuck?” Grant gasps for air, coughs, then looks through the doorway into the stairwell, horror and revulsion stamped into his face. “What the fuck was that?”

Jenny starts to retch, realizes what a bad idea that would be in her helmet, and forces back her gag reflex. She gets on to her hands and knees, noting with surprise that she hurts all over. Grant’s abilities are weird and useful and impressive, but super strength isn’t one of them. She’s pretty sure he isn’t responsible for this.

“Uhhhh…” She takes a deep, steadying breath. Some of the pain recedes. “Evil magic spell, I think.”

“Right.” Grant stands, then quickly props himself up against a wall to keep himself from falling again. “Well. It sucks.”

Jenny climbs to her feet, crouching, hands on her knees. “Well, hopefully that’s the—”

All of the lights in the hall go out, engulfing it in darkness. Then the hall is flooded with red as emergency lighting activates. A rasping, high-pitched shriek comes from the far end of the hallway, followed by others.

“Nice job,” Grant says. “You were going to say ‘hopefully that’s the worst of it,’ weren’t you?”

“No!” Jenny protests. “I was going to say ‘hopefully that’s the last of it. I wasn’t tempting the Gods of Escalation, I swear!”

“How is that better? You dodge the Gods of Escalation by calling on the Gods Of Yet Another Goddamn Thing?”

As if on cue, the shadows at the end of the hall come to life and try to kill them.