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TRAPPED AGAIN

Monte swaggered down the corridor feeling very accomplished. Officially logged as ‘sick’ for the remainder of the day, she decided it was time to hunt down some of those books she’d been after.

“Could you head down to Human Resources?”

Monte stopped. If it had been possible to stare disapprovingly at her earpiece, she would have.

“I’m on sick leave,” she replied, feigning a cough.

“No you’re not…” said her boss. “You’re halfway down E-Hallway, scratchin’ your head.”

Monte’s figure deflated as she spun around on the spot. A shock of red hair met her as the gangly figure of her boss bobbed between people in the corridor. He ducked around a group of scientists, waving rather falsely at a few who did their best to ignore him.

She didn’t speak, but acknowledged his presence with a, “Mmhmm?”

“My Phase-Suit ready yet?”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

His arms were strained around a heavy looking box. “You’re holding out on me…” he winked, but Monte assured him that she was doing him a favour. “Well, they can’t stay down there doing nothing forever. You know the policy, we’ve all got to be productive members of the labs.”

“They’re making progress. It’s a difficult ask.”

“I don’t make the rules, Monte. Mace and Litmus have three months, after that I’m putting them up for review. I shouldn’t even be givin’ them that but you put so much effort into their defence that – well anyway, if we try separating them, it might buy them some time –”

“I’ll have a word…”

She went to continue on down the corridor but her boss sprinted in front of her, arms outstretched. “Be a dear and drop this off while you’re down there…”

~^*^~

‘Human Resources’ was the bowls of the underground world. Carved into the lowest level of the labs, there was nothing between it and the rocky foundations holding the entire structure in place. Most of the corridors on the level didn’t bother with a cement render and were instead lined with coarsely cut sandstone marbled with rivers of red and white.

It was a cave with doors and rooms. Half the time Monte expected to find Count Dracula lurking around a turn or at the very least a flock of fanged bats. To her despair, she often found nothing at all during her trips. It was a cold, lonely place and she hated it.

Shifting the heavy box onto her hip, she held her thumb on the touch pad beside the door and waited for it to click open and slide across. As she had expected, the room was empty. The automatic lights clicked on, bringing the area out of darkness and she wasted no time dumping the box on the table nearest the door. If they wanted it, someone would be sent to retrieve it.

She turned to leave, wiping a hand across her forehead while casting a glance at the rows of seating lining the edges of the room. All this wasted space – they hardly used this level except for sector meetings and she could scarce recall the last time there had been one of those. There were supposedly offices in the next corridor belonging to the executive members and administrators of the labs, but people were rarely invited to confirm their existence.

“Urgh…” Monte’s hips were yanked to the side. She realised too late that her lab coat button was caught on the edge of the box. The heavy item tied her to the desk momentarily before sliding from the tabletop, sending both her and the box to the ground.

She rolled back toward the spilt box with an unsightly glare. Swearing, she retrieved her severed button from the ground and pulled the loose curl of cotton free; that was when she noticed a trail of smoke climbing into the air above the box.

It was a slender column of smoke which rippled as she crawled closer, darting around her breath. Some of it seeped into the general scent of the air, tainting it with a burnt aroma. Monte crinkled her nose and tipped the remainder of the box onto the floor.

Dozens of electronic clipboards had been scattered across the floor. They varied in model and condition, but it was instantly clear that each one had been kept, cared for and loved throughout its life. Most bared those personal additions such as the etching of a name along one of its sleek edges, or a ratty sticker on its reverse side. At the bottom of the pile she found the source of the smoke.

Shocked, she cradled the smoking clipboard in her arms. It was hers. She recognised it at once. Despite its innards dangling free, this was her electronic clipboard containing almost every thought she had had since she her arrival in the labs. Monte thought that she had thrown it away yet here it was, settled amongst a cluster of precious items, causing trouble as usual.

Hers may have been a mangle of wire, but the others appeared in good order (barring their most recent crash to the floor). Monte frowned, putting hers back into the box with the others. She heaved the box back onto the table and checked that she wasn’t attached to it multiple times before striding off.

~^*^~

Michael was not as easily impressed as they had hoped.

“You work here?” he asked, once again running his crinkled hands over the walls of the room. They paused on various items, leaving a trail of cleanness where the dust had parted.

“Not exactly,” Mace, determined not to hesitate too long in case Litmus decided to take over with another of his ‘gentle’ explanations, spoke hurriedly. “We work here, but only because we died. Well,” Mace corrected himself, his voice sliding as it often did, “that’s not quite accurate. None of us died, obviously.” He smiled self consciously, lowering his eyes to the floor and then to the side where the lab plant continued to flourish. It looked perkier – healthier.

“But we nearly did,” he continued with sincerity. “That’s how the labs acquire their skills, an action which they must, for all mankind.”

“Heard that line before,” mocked Litmus.

“Must you quip at everything I say? Really Litmus…”

The pair of scientists continued the conversation with nasty looks and shrugged shoulders until Michael interrupted, trying to make sense of the precise meaning of the word, ‘acquired’. “I’ve been acquired?”

“Tagged and bagged,” Litmus piped on the way past. Mace grabbed hold of his wrist, cutting of both the circulation to his hand and his motion through the room.

The older scientist leant behind Litmus and whispered something in his ear. Afterwards, he realised the scrawny figure who was distinctly sobered.

“As I thought you may have realised by now,” said Mace, “they only take people from what would have been a fatal scenario. Technically, we should all be dead. As far as I know, the dead do not have rights. Nobody even knows that we exist. We are, for all intensive purposes, dead.”

Michael shook his head. “I’m not dead,” he said firmly, shoving the elder scientist to prove his solid state existence.

Mace teetered backwards but did not fall; even his expression retained its stable facade. “Interesting theory, could do with a better method.”

“That would be his idea of a welcome,” interjected Litmus to Michael, stroking the leaf of the waxy plant. It wilted with each soft caress.

Mace kept his gaze with Michael, fully aware that he had just finished telling the boy that what was left of his life belonged to the labs. It was not an easy thing to hear, and it was certainly not an easy thing to tell, but it was a fact. Facts must be preserved and above all, made transparent – with a smile, if possible. Sadly, all Mace could manage was a nod.

It was often argued that it would be easier to lie to new arrivals like Michael, break the news into them gradually but the simple fact – that word again, was that the final results were inevitable and delaying them on intensified their suffering.

“It’s the catch,” explained Litmus, coming to a stand beside Mace in a united front, “for a second chance at life.”

Michael wanted nothing more than to be back on his bike with the roar of the engines thrusting him forward.

“I don’t remember seeking a second chance,” he muttered. The possibility remained that this could be a pre-death hallucination and he was still suspended, moments from the ground and his desired freedom. As the minutes progressed, this scenario became less and less likely. Michael closed his eyes, acutely aware of the concrete around him. He wanted the sunset, not a barren stretch of concrete.

Litmus placed a hand affectionately on the wall. “It’s really not so bad this, the labs. I’m sure if you give it time –” Mace gripped onto Litmus once again, but this time it was gentle.

“No Litmus,” he whispered.

“And you can’t,” Michael rephrased himself, brining a thumb between his eyes, pressing a throbbing vein which popped free of his skin. “We can’t leave?” The lack of response told Michael all that he needed to know.

Michael stood, nodding. Suddenly his knees bent and he was off at a run, racing through the experiment room. Michael scanned the area and spotted the foyer with the unmistakable outline of a door. Panicking, he hurled himself at it. Clenching his fists, Michael belted the keypad smashing the device which beeped angrily. He needed to get out, anywhere that was out. He needed a better cliff.

Mace and Litmus exchanged a look of concern as sharp electronic tones filled the room. This scene was eerily similar to that of the Daniel.

“How do you – how do you open this?” demanded Michael, bashing away. “I want to open the door. Open the door!”

The pair joined Michael in the entrance foyer.

“Michael, the door is locked.”

Litmus hid behind Mace as Michael’s aggression became more pronounced.

Furiously, Michael turned to Mace. “Open the door now!” he shouted, his body angrily slamming against the door leaving a smudge of red.

Mace replied with a quiet ‘no’ which resulted in several loud impacts.

Losing interest in the panel, Michael took Mace by his coat, dragging him over the floor and pinning him against the door.

Mace’s head hit the wall sharply. Litmus stepped forward in horror, but Mace waved him off with a free hand. Michael’s instructions bordered on delirium but Mace calmly protested each demand. He was in no real danger. Michael, though younger, was inferior in both size and strength.

“When you calm down, we will talk.” Michael had not put Mace down yet, but his grip did give a little as Mace twisted his neck. “Only after you can prove to me that you are not a danger to Litmus, myself of anyone else beyond that door,” said Mace sternly, “will I open it for you. Is that understood?”

“Can I leave then?” Michael meant, ‘could he leave the labs?’

“Never.”

“Then what’s the point!”

“By all means,” said Mace calmly, “continue behaving like this. I assure you that none of it will open the door. It’s over Michael. Whatever brought you down here to us has done so. The decision was made and now you’re here and you must deal with that now either you calm down, or I force you to calm down.”

Michael kicked the wall beside the door, chipping away some of the cement from the corner.

“You have every right to be mad – and you should be. You should be livid to the point that you pick up the nearest object and pin it against the wall but consider this,” Mace could feel his collar loosening around his neck with each word he spoke. “You are alive.”

The cliffs, Michael sailed off them into the darkness.

Mace felt his full weight return to his feet and the floor beneath. He brought his hands up to Michael’s which were still grasping his collar. The young boy’s eyes were staring straight into his but seeing something other than Mace.

“But I do not want to live,” said Michael, struggling to tell reality from memory as the walls and Mace merged with an expanse of star-lit sky.

Mace felt every beat of the child’s cold heart and for a moment he felt the world turn to nothing.

Michael pushed against Mace with a final surge of strength and then fell to the floor in tears. Mace joined him, quietly apologising. The young boy’s hands clung to Mace’s lab coat. Litmus watched for a moment and then turned his back – his eyes settling on the ceiling.

A NEW ARRIVAL

“Impaling yourself on a stalactite is not smooth form.” Mace winked in Monte’s direction.

“Stalagmite,” Litmus corrected. “I’d be impressed if I managed the other one – it being on the roof and all.”

“Quite an adventure then – won’t help us with the lingering deadline though. Just to clarify, you’ll be the one with their neck in a sling. Minions always die first.”

Litmus was busy bandaging his arm, ripping a piece off his lab coat to tie the lot together. His cleanliness was gradually decreasing, with mud and blood affecting the whiteness of his coat. Mace half expected him to nest soon – hoard anything warm from the lab and drag it off never to be seen again.

Monte tilted her head, staring intently at Litmus’s pocket. A slender frond was creeping out of it, slinking toward the couch. An escapee from the botanical lab. She frowned and reached forward, extracting it from Litmus’s pocket without him noticing. The green limb was supple but firm, determined to resist her examination. It slid through fingers like a reptile and hit the cushion, free of her. She went after it at once, but it buried itself in the couch.

“So oops…” she whispered.

The door to Lab 47 slid open and Benny entered the foyer rather ungracefully, lugging the unconscious Michael over his shoulder. There was a loud ‘thump’ as he dumped the body on the floor.

Benny’s presence unsettled the room. In the strong light, the curve of his back was more pronounced as was the slight withering of his left leg. To hide the inch of difference he wore a heavy steel heal which tended to drag. A sinister scrape accompanied every other step where it failed to fully alight from the ground.

Mace and Monte heard the soft ‘sss’ of the electronic door and realised that they had a visitor pondering existence in the foyer. Not wanting to look too much at home, Monte handed back the towel she had been using to dry her hair and retrieved her soggy lab coat. Next she dashed over to the small kitchen where her shoes were drying in front of the oven. They were damp, but warm.

~^*^~

Litmus’s shoulders dropped. Mace lowered his clipboard, examining the creature he found slumped against his wall. Puzzled, he turned to Monte.

“Who’s this then?”

“Rather – what…” Litmus corrected.

She eyed the clutter of bones and flesh at her feet. “Someone I’d like you two to meet.” In all the excitement, she had forgotten. “This is your new associate – just got in today.” Monte folded her arms and flashed the whites of her eyes. More correctly, the creature in front of them had been dropped onto her floor early in the morning at which time she had been in a punishing sort of mood.

“But I don’t want any more assistants…” Mace frowned.

Litmus absently signed a clipboard thrust in his direction. Benny collected it and, sensing that his existence was no longer required, left Lab 47, quickly disappearing behind the edge of the door.

Litmus shivered, his instincts unsettled.

“Creepy,” he whispered. “Stole three people last week. Never seen again – none of them. Lovely people, odd but lovely.” Whether the accusation was true remained to be seen. “And where are they now?” Litmus continued. “Not here, not underneath either I suspect.”

People didn’t only arrive without warning in the labs, they also disappeared.

There was a fierce expression on Mace’s face aimed straight at Litmus’s nose. “Maybe next time you can sign in blood and doom us to an eternity of unknown fate.”

Like always, Litmus had not bothered to enquire as to what exactly he was signing for.

Litmus’s innocent mouth tweaked down at its edges. He shrugged.

“Too late now for minding,” Mace hit him sharply with his clipboard.

“Minding is not my thing. Good at ambivalence,” Litmus said, with a little quirk of his eyebrow.

Mace thought about the many ways in which he could arrange for Litmus to go missing into the realm of ambivalence.

Monte flipped open a damp notepad in the absence of her clipboard, bringing their attention back to the body on the floor.

The group stared down at the body. Leather jacket, jeans, black T-shirt; these were all they could make out except whoever it was had an Eastern hair style, meaning that it had as little attention paid to it as possible in irregular intervals while his skin was a sickly white, listless where it clasped at his bones.

“What’s the city boy do?” Mace nudged it with his shoe.

“No idea,” replied Monte, shaking her head at the scruffy sight.

Mace bent the upper half of his body to the side in observation, examining the body’s bindings. “Why’s he gagged? The last on you delivered was fully alert and briefly informed.”

Monte remembered. She skimmed the scattered hand written information in her notepad. “This one literally just got in, hasn’t even woken up yet.”

“Not like you,” began Mace accusingly, “to deliver a new arrival without prior request. After the last one I thought we were on the cover page of the black list.” Mace pointed his finger at her, “This better not be your idea of punishment.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she watched his finger wiggle about. “We’re packed these days which means that it’s your turn to take one in. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they’d started falling from the sky of late. Don’t look so upset – we’ll relocate him to the newly dug section as soon as it’s ready.”

Mace lowered his arm in concern, “I still think this is punishment.”

“Which would mean you knew we would do something worth punishing,” helped Litmus.

A wrinkle bridged Monte’s nose. “Call it ‘backpay’ if you like.”

Her notepad contained the limited information they had on the boy – his approximate age, probable genetic makeup, life expectancy and that kind of thing. Usually the data included a name and profession but all Monte could find was an aside about bike riding and how she was expressly not to let him do it. Not much chance of that though, she thought.

Litmus glanced nervously at the sleeping creature on the floor. “Does this mean he doesn’t know about the whole ‘trapped beneath the surface of the earth’ thing?”

Monte grinned in a disconcerting way. Litmus’s head fell back to take in the vast expanse of ceiling while Mace groaned something along the lines of, “Why do I have to be the one to tell the church the world is round?”

“Because you enjoy it,” replied Monte, ripping off the relevant page and handing it to him. “I expect a copy of that later. Also, you might want to leave those on for a while,” she hinted at the restraints binding Michael’s hands, feet and mouth. “Boss said he might be a little – well anyway…” Monte closed her notepad, tapping Litmus lightly on the head with it. “Have a nice afternoon.”

She stepped over Michael’s splayed legs, pausing at the doorway for theatrical effect. “Enjoy gentlemen. Oh,” she caught the edge of the door with her hand before it closed. “He’s not for experimental purposes. This one is a colleague so I don’t want to wander in here and find him falling through the floor or anything.”

Litmus and Mace chanted, “Yes Monte,” in a tight harmony.

The door closed behind her leaving Litmus and Mace locked in an awkward moment of silence until their unconscious guest snored.

“You know,” said Mace, once he was sure Monte was safely out of earshot. “I think she enjoys her job a touch more than she’s supposed to.”

Stepping forward, Litmus examined Michael, cataloguing the various bruises visible. “I’m still trying to work out what that might be. You wonder though,” he said in his next breath, “where they keep getting these from.” He pointed at the boy.

“The same place you and I came from,” replied Mace, lifting his eyes meaningfully to the ceiling. “The sky.”

~^*^~

Pacing deliberately between the narrow passageways of Level 4, a short, wide sort of a man with a balding top stopped to scribble arbitrary numbers in his notebook. Scratching the spot where the lights reflected off his scalp, the man bent over and drew a line on the ground with a stick of chalk. Nodding, he then tucked his possessions back into his pocket and went about his day.

A young scientist with dark hair and a scruffy disposition watched him as he passed through the corridor. After the bald man vanished, the younger scientist tracked up the corridor, scrutinising the floor until he found the inconspicuous chalk mark. Bending down, he rubbed the white dust into a faint smear ensuring that it could not be found again.

~^*^~

The body in the lab slept, calmly propped up against the wall. Litmus teetered in for a closer look, balanced perilously in his massive boots.

“Bit pitiful really, humans.”

Between the occasional snores, Michael’s unconscious body slipped across the wall edging ever closer to the cement floor. Suddenly, friction failed him and his body jarred, involuntary muscles stopping his head from hitting the floor. His eyes snapped open.

Startled, Litmus rocked backwards landing on his butt.

“M-Mace…” he said, scrambling away.

Mace snuck a look around the corner, pretending not to be interested. “What now?” he exhaled, doing his best to sound displeased.

Litmus watched Michael struggle against the restraints which did not look as if they would hold him for long.

“It’s escaping!” cried Litmus in panic, as Michael’s fingers scratched at the thing covering his mouth. “Really, I think you should do something.”

“Like what, Litmus?”

“I don’t know,” he glanced around the foyer for a weapon. “Call Monte!”

“She’d love that. Besides, I’m not in the mood to give her fodder for the lunch room.”

Litmus was back on his feet, seeking refuge by the pot plant.

“Fine,” he fumbled around for an earpiece he never used. “I’ll call her.”

Mace snatched it off him. It was a mangled and gnawed thing that probably wouldn’t have worked anyway.

“Don’t you dare, Litmus.”

The boy stopped struggling. Pushing his back against the wall, Michael forced his body upwards as his feet tried to stand. Like sandpaper, he ground up the concrete until his legs crumbled beneath him, too weak to hold his weight. Defeated, his head fell to the side where it looked along the wall. There, on the bleak surface of Lab 47’s foyer, he saw a tiny fern unfurl another green arm into the baking light. It was a slow action, surreal.

Litmus moved in closer with a gleam in his eyes that went beyond fascination. There was something different about new arrivals. They were tangible proof that life existed above all the dirt and cement, reminding the inhabitants of the world beyond their cage. It was not a sight you got to see very often. Even Litmus, who was content with his tunnelled environment, sniffed the freshness of the air around Michael.

“Why do they do that?” he asked, with a voice bordering on sinister. Systems of infinite complexity were churning, deciding what to do. Litmus could hear them.

Mace leant on the doorway. “I think it’s because they know what’s coming.” He watched as Michael reached out for something on the wall. “They can feel the walls but they’re not used to them. Wild animals do it too. When they’re trapped they pace along their cages, lick the bars and curl up in a corner.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to kill him?”

“We’re not going to kill him,” Mace rolled his eyes.

Michael was not so different from another who sat exactly in his place eight months ago but that had all ending badly. Daniel was destroyed by the labs and had vanished into them, lost forever. Mace waved away the last of the wispy smoke hanging in the room and withdrew from the scene with a hand lifting quickly to his face, brushing a dribble of wetness.

“As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted,” Mace tucked his hair behind his ears and coughed oddly into his hand. “We need to venture further into the lower frequencies if we are to disrupt gravity’s wave function completely. It’s no good having things fall through the floor. We need them out of phase and walking around – preferably through the walls.”

“I don’t know Mace, this one’s a little different.” Litmus snapped his fingers a few times but the boy did not respond. “They’re not usually this – I don’t know, tripped out. I hope Monte didn’t give him anything.”

Wanting to untie him, Litmus approached the boy cautiously.

“A moment ago you were freaking out because he was about to escape – now you’re letting him go.”

“Yeah, but now I’m curious.”

“Comforting,” muttered Mace, changing a few numbers on his clipboard. “Your mood seems to be in transit.”

“At least’s it’s not permanently fixated on a certain –” he shot over his shoulder.

“Continue that sentence and you’ll wake up in a quantum lab.” Mace was quiet for a moment. “I think we should move him to the library. At least we can lock the door if something goes wrong – I don’t want him running around in here destroying equipment.”

Litmus agreed and they proceeded to drag the shocked individual through the experiment room and into the small library. Michael spread his legs out, catching the edge of the doorway with his foot.

“I don’t think he likes your library,” grinned Litmus, knocking Michael’s foot off the door frame.

Michael snapped his head back as they laid him against the wall at the back of the narrow room. Sweat broke through the skin on his forehead, peeking out from under a brown curl. His eyes were cold, but only because their blue was clear, tinted as an iceberg passing between the sky and sea might be.

~^*^~

The junior scientist reached around behind Michael’s head and began picking at the knot holding the rag in place. Michael’s eyes grew larger, worried by the way Litmus hardly blinked. For someone who assumed that they should be dead, this was an interesting turn around. Michael was very certain that this place was not a medical facility but still, a brief scan of the book titles squeezed between the shelves set him firmly in the realms of science.

The room was small and dank with surfaces covered in congealed dust. Wherever this was and whoever these people were, he would escape. Captivity did not become him.

The rag fell into Litmus’s hands, smelling of fresh mould like all things that originated from the outer corridors. Letting it drop to the ground, Litmus raised his hands in a calming fashion to show that he was friendly.

“The new ones are always such a hassle,” said Mace, inspecting a stray cord on the ground. It was ripped apart by Lucy’s fingernails. Mace quickly picked it up and tucked it in his pocket for later. He hadn’t mentioned her visit yet, and did not intend to. Better Litmus stay well away from Lucy. “They yell and scream and –”

Michael sucked in his first full breath. The pores in his lungs opened. Organisms which were too small to live beyond the swollen bronchi, divided into clusters.

“There you go,” said Litmus soothingly. He had finished untying the boy’s feet.

Instead of oxygen propagating through his veins, Michael gasped. He listened to the persistent drip that he remembered from the dark hallway. In this place he could feel the cold, and hear the water trickle. He turned his head back to look along the wall. There, a tiny white flower was suspended from a fragile green limb. It curved once, holding the weight of the petals. It had not been there before. Michael closed his eyes and the flower became the moon, nestled high above the desert mountain range. The world was dark and silent. Not a trace of orange remained to remember the sun.

The boy reached up into no-where with his hands still bound. Litmus waved his own hand in front of the boy’s eyes to no effect.

Intrigued, Mace took a step closer.

For Michael, the edge of the cliff approached as he walked over the sand. The sun appeared, having ventured around the planet and begun to set faster than he remembered – falling through the softness of premature dusk as if gravity had let go of the Earth. Now on his bike, he raced in chase of the sun while the ground retreated. Against his will, the cliff grew closer. Michael ripped his head up to find the sun gone. Darkness spread over the land and the cliff kept coming towards him. The darkness pursed him from behind, so fast that he felt certain it would consume him before he reached the edge of the cliff. They met half way, the darkness, Michael and the cliff.

Litmus clicked his fingers loudly – ripping Michael’s vision away.

A moan breached the walls of the lab. Michael’s lips parted as he exhaled, releasing something of his soul he had never known.

Annoyed, Mace covered his ears, unlocked the door and returned to the experiment room in a huff.

Litmus rolled his eyes at Mace while attempting to stop the noise. “What is the matter with people these days?” he complained as the whine drew out into a cry.

“They flirt too much,” snapped Mace snarkly. “Keep him quiet or we’ll have the whole neighbourhood donating questionable items.”

Michael broke into a stutter.

“Keep him quiet,” Litmus mimicked Mace’s tone perfectly. “He’s not my responsibility.”

Michael gasped desperately, struggling to form speech.

“Who?” Michael rasped, eyeing the man with glasses and enormous boots.

“Who am I?” offered Litmus helpfully. “A question for the ages. My name is Doctor Moreau, and that over there is Spock.” Litmus attempted to point at Mace but he had vanished once again to retrieve something. “Sorry,” he continued, worried that he had upset the creature further. “Just a little joke there. Are you all right? You look deathly…”

“Probably still can’t work out whether or not he’s dead,” replied Mace, returning. His crisp coat swished around him as Mace joined Litmus on the floor, laying his clipboard down beside them. It gave a disapproving ‘bleep’ upon contact with the cement.

“I was just –” started Michael.

“About to die?” finished Mace, matter of factly.

Michael nodded.

“We were all about to die,” said Litmus. “You’ll get over it, probably sooner than you should.”

“Frankly, there’s no point in wasting time on one’s own mortality.”

“Waste of precious time,” agreed Litmus. “You know, there’s a lot more to being a carbon unit than developing ever more creative ways to waste time.” Litmus inspected Michael again. His attire left a lot to be desired – especially the tears through his leather jacket. “You’re not like the last one we had in here. He was taller, smarter – significantly better looking. Didn’t last long, that one.”

Mace cut the ties binding Michael’s wrists with a rusted Stanley knife. “Another genius…” he shook his head solemnly.

“Aren’t they all? Yet none of them are. We’re the only geniuses.” Litmus informed the new arrival confidently. “Just because you’re –”

“Un-dead?” Michael offered.

Litmus frowned. “Not-dead – don’t go thinking you’re special.” For a second, his inscrutable countenance flickered, but there was no trace of remorse in his eyes. “So,” Litmus chirped, as brightly as before. “What are you? Animal, mineral, perhaps an exotic vegetable?”

Michael was so confused.

“A bit slow this one is, Moreau,” remarked Mace, starting to wonder if Michael was going to end up like the last one – lost to the corridors.

“What are you?” Litmus rehashed, hoping to improve upon the clarity of the enquiry.

“H-human,” stuttered Michael.

Litmus gave him a disapproving look. “What I mean is, are you a Scientist? Rockstar? Theologian? Pop Tart?”

Understanding, Michael breathed a deserved sigh of relief. “No,” he replied, “I’m not an anything.”

“Not an anything?” said Litmus. “Everyone’s a something.”

“I don’t know Professor Moreau, this one might be a nothing.”

“Something that’s a nothing,” Litmus mulled this over. “Well, that would be a new one.”

“They’re always trying new things out on us.”

Litmus narrowed his already pencil like eyebrows, “Why is that?”

“No idea Watson.”

The eyebrows shot up, “I thought I was Moreau?”

“You were?”

“I think I was,” Litmus replied, quite sure. It was his role play after all…

“Oh, you were Watson last time. Apologies. Scared the little snow bunny half to death. What am I again?” Mace had never been very good at keeping track of his character – he always lost at those murder mystery parties that were all the rage a while back. Litmus, on the other hand, usually ended up as the cigar smoking murderer. A role he made the most of, slipping into a short brimmed hat, puffing superiorly away.

Michael was plastered against the cement wall, not sure about what he found more concerning; the approaching darkness of his dreams, or the insanity before him.

Litmus, not put off, tilted his head to the side. “Are you sure you’re supposed to be here?” he asked Michael again.

“Where’s here?”

“I having doubts about this one…” whispered Mace to Litmus.

“I conquer Mulder.”

“Spock,” corrected Mace, now quite fond of this.

Oblivious, Litmus smiled, almost raising his hand for an imaginary drag of an equally imaginary cigar. “That’s what I said.”

Michael glanced from Mace to Litmus. Both of them were grinning madly. Michael saw their teeth glisten before he passed out on the floor.

~^*^~

The next time light graced Michael’s eyes it was to the sound of humming instruments and the deep, rhythmic purring of a feline curled up next to him.

“We can start over again…”

“No! This was not a waste of time, I refuse to believe it. Even if we wanted to – they wouldn’t allow it. We’re through unless-”

Michael sneezed, rolling over. He had always been allergic to cats, especially long haired ones like the Persian napping disinterestedly next to him.

“Litmus, I think you’ll find your pet is awake.”

The cat unfolded its feet and stood up. After stretching its bones in a furry arch, it strolled off to vanish into the room leaving behind several silver hairs where it had slept.

His restraints were gone, as was most of the redness. Turning to the sound of Mace’s voice, Michael failed to pick him out through the many obstacles that filled the tiny room. Finally, the harsh light coming from above abated as a pair of sock covered feet approached.

“Oh,” said their owner, “would you look at that.” Litmus wiggled his toes directly in front of Michael’s head which was currently flush to the floor.

All Michael could see were odd looking, out of focus socks. Instinctively he recoiled, tilting his head upwards. His bleary eyes blinked, focusing Litmus – or was it Moreau…

“There you are!” exclaimed Litmus, happy to see the young chap awake.

Michael found himself fighting the urge to blink again as a second Litmus appeared, coming in and out of focus.

“Don’t worry,” said the two Litmus’s in unison. “You’ll be a wee bit dazed for another hour or so. It’s a common side effect.” The curious scientist grinned broadly.

Michael tried to speak but lapsed into a dry coughing fit instead. Litmus, now in the singular, handed him a glass of water which Michael sipped eagerly. “Side effect of what?” he rasped.

Litmus folded his arms. “Of passing out… What else?” he added suspiciously.

“N-nothing,” Michael shook his head, not wanting to give them any ideas.

“Oh,” Litmus surveyed the drowsy individual, “you thought we might have drugged you with some kind of experimental technology for our light entertainment?”

The look the young man gave him in response confirmed Litmus’s suspicion.

“Well don’t worry; they stopped doing that years ago.” Litmus sometimes missed the old, overarching laws. “Something about costing…”

“Litmus!” the elevated, Mace-like voice caused Litmus to jump. “Stop telling the poor creature stories.”

Litmus raised his hands apologetically, more at Mace than Michael.

The lighting in Lab 47 dimmed as Litmus squatted to eye level. “What’s your name?”

Now slumped against a bookshelf, Michael rubbed the darkening bruise on his forehead. “Uh, Michael,” he replied, as if unsure.

A hand extended in Michael’s direction. Litmus pulled him to his feet.

“Well Michael,” Litmus made sure Michael could stand on his own before letting go. “Welcome to Lab Forty-Seven – the place you’ll be calling home for the rest of your merry, medically extended, life.”

Around him, Michael could see nothing more extraordinary than concrete. He swayed unsteadily, the fluids in his brain not quite used to the altitude.

The slender figure of Mace appeared from behind a wall of books. He moved through the room briskly.

“Litmus,” he said, “you need to start listening more.” Mace tapped the screen of his electronic clipboard, bringing up a medical file Monte had sent him from her new clipboard a few moments ago. “He doesn’t know yet, remember?”

Letting his clipboard fall by his side hidden by his unbuttoned jacket, Mace advanced. His character permeated every inch of the surrounding space, with what exactly, Michael could not be sure. All he knew was that as Mace extended his hand, Michael felt his memories of the cliff face flash in and out of reality. It was like the desert wind was ripping through the lab, disturbing the room itself and leaving in its wake a fine layer of dust. Mace’s hand waited expectantly in the air. Michael took it and as he did, the wind died down in a final kick, disappearing as if it had never been there.

“I’m Dr. Mace. Pleased to meet you –”

“Michael,” Litmus filled in.

“Pleased to meet you Michael,” Mace shook with one hand while passing his clipboard to Litmus with the other, sending his now free hand into the depths of his lab coat to withdraw several items.

Michael did not take his eyes off the objects which appeared in Mace’s hands. They could have been the props of a sadistic dentist. “You too,” he managed, his eyes widening as Mace pierced the seal of a vile with a long, tapered needle. Its fine point almost vanished in the air, having no more than a few microns of substance. Mace started to draw up the slightly metallic liquid through it, “I think.”

Litmus was distracted by the sight of the syringe tapping against the side of the glass vile. “Well,” he began, dragging his eyes away from the churning silver. “I’m sure you’ve got an incomputable amount of questions backlogged – only several of which we’ll contemplate answering. So – off you go. Shoot, as the trendy cliché were.”

“Uh,” the needle brimmed with the swirling substance, “I’m in a lab of some kind?” Litmus nodded calmly. Michael wanted to yell something about the severe misrepresentation on the afterlife brochure, but settled for a more civil, “Where are we?”

“Beneath the surface of a desert,” replied Litmus, fixing his seldom used glasses perched upon his head.

“Which desert?”

Litmus frowned, “You ask a lot of questions…” Michael shook his head. “This is your second question.”

“Actually,” interrupted Mace, “I believe the first one was a statement that we confirmed, more than an actual question.”

“Great. Forgive me if this is a primitive second question, but what the – argh!” Michael stopped, feeling a sharp prick in his upper arm. He turned to see Mace wielding a suspiciously empty needle as a warm sensation began to trickle down his arm. “What was that?” he snapped.

Litmus mouthed an appreciative ouch as Mace shrugged, “Vaccination. It’s compulsory; we don’t know what kind of pathogens you might be carrying.”

He rubbed the sore spot. “Do I get a third question? Wait –” Michael’s hands raised up in protest as Mace went to open his mouth, “don’t tell me. It is better that I don’t know. Just – warn me next time there’s some compulsory, viscous material I need to be given, okay?” Michael could not believe he was saying it as if he might be around long enough for a repeat.

“If you would prefer,” said Mace, returning the empty vile and needle to his coat pocket.

Michael’s arm began to tingle, the warmth finally giving way to painful pins and needles. He rubbed it again, horrified to see his skin darken in a broad circumference around the needle prick. “Yes,” he said, watching the progression in horror. “I would prefer.”

After checking that Mace was not carrying anything else sharp or pointy, Michael took a few cautious steps through the library, tracing the spines of the books. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, or where the hell I am, but the last thing I remember is falling off a cliff.”

“That’s one way,” said Mace to Litmus, who seemed impressed.

Litmus eyed a particularly large book. He tilted it, and then pulled it free. A moment later he handed the heavy thing to Michael, opened. The boy’s eyes were drawn to a highlighted segment.

He read aloud, “The labs are part of an underground facility dedicated to advancing human technology. It is designed to speed up human technology by taking the required skills and putting them to work in the labs where otherwise they would be lost to us.” He handed the book back. “By skills, I presume I translate that as, ‘people’,” said Michael, seeing a nod of agreement from Litmus.

The two scientists grinned ear to ear. “We’re going to be a family!”

WATERFALL OVER BOTANY

“Where are we going?” asked Monte, as she and Litmus ducked around another of the seemingly endless corridors. They were on Level 12, Horticultural and Geographic Sciences, several floors beneath Lab 47.

Litmus, pressed against a wall, raised a finger to his lips. Monte sighed and reluctantly fell back into the shadows. The corridor in front of them was unbearably bright, illuminating every pockmark in the cement walls and burning off the moss that had once tried to take root there. They hid in a narrow hallway that fed into it, perfectly silent as a pair of feet squeaked along the hallway, unaware of their presence.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” whispered Monte, her mouth close to his ear. “Sorry, you shouldn’t be doing this,” she corrected herself.

Without looking, Litmus covered her mouth with his hand and leant forward, peering around the corner. It was bare of life for the moment.

“Come on,” he lowered his hand to her arm and pulled her into the light.

They ran as quietly as they could along the polished cement, their white coats trailing out behind them. Along both walls were doors marked with silver plates – Dr. This and Dr. That and above each plaque, a string of delicate numbers.

Monte, the faster of them, deliberately slowed her step until Litmus ran into her back, apologised, and stepped to the side. She was getting used to it.

“It’s this way,” she said, tugging on his coat.

The corridor they ducked into was narrower but just as bright. Litmus read the numbers off the doors until he came to 12844. Skidding to a halt, he withdrew a tiny screw driver from his pocket and pried the lid off the security panel.

A three foot black streak ended at Litmus’s rubber shoes. Monte eyed it disapprovingly.

“It troubles me how easily you do this,” she said, as the locking mechanism clicked out of place.

“Whoever said it was easy?” he smiled, snapping the security lid back on as good as new.

Litmus touched the six-inch-thick door with his fingertip. It swung open with silent ease. Warmth was the first thought Monte had as she entered the stark room. It was a clean white, wall to wall and no bigger than three square metres. Litmus, camouflaged by his lab coat, crossed the room in a couple of steps.

Without a word, he stared into the translucent wall. It was comprised of two slices of thick, frosted glass, behind which was a glow. Like a creature in a cage, Litmus tilted his head from side to side, looking along the walls.

“Ah,” he said finally, stepping to the left. Litmus ran his hand gently over the glassy surface and then pushed firmly. To Monte’s surprise, a small portion of the wall depressed. With a sigh of air, a segment on their right opened up to reveal a large chamber.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Monte repeated.

“You have to learn to relax.” Litmus would be lying if he said he was ‘relaxed’. Indeed, he wasn’t sure if he had ever been truly relaxed. His speciality was ‘quiet caution’ which he executed perfectly for Monte’s benefit.

Monte’s heart began to flutter with alarm Litmus approached the newly discovered door. Before she could speak, he had disappeared around its corner leaving her alone in the humid room. Her hair began to curl as the back of her throat went dry.

“Litmusss…” she hissed, taking a cautious step forward. Her voice vanished at once, sucked into the walls. Monte glanced over her shoulder at the entrance, but it too had merged back into the general aura of white.

“Are you coming or not?” Litmus’s bodiless head popped into view.

Monte swore. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Quite the opposite. But you better hurry up or that might just be the outcome.” He widened his eyes in encouragement, his rare smile growing with each step she took towards him.

“You’re a dead man,” she said, prodding him sharply as she passed.

“Aren’t we all? Now, watch the step.”

Monte watched the step and promptly slipped on the floor. Litmus reached out as her arms flailed. They caught each other and fell onto the tiled floor with a crash. Largely unharmed, they scrambled to their feet.

“Probably should have mentioned the water, too,” Litmus muttered, wringing out his lab coat.

Monte didn’t hear him. They were standing on a tiled ledge, fenced in with a series of aluminium bars at knee, hip and torso height. To their left was a dangerous staircase descending into nowhere and in front, the lofty canopies of Red Golds, Wollemi Pines and waxy backed leaves which waved gently in the artificial breeze. Far below, a dense bulge of green obscured most of the cavern with heavy vines strangling the branches of smaller trees.

Monte moved cautiously forward with one hand still holding lightly onto Litmus’s outstretched limb. He followed, overcome with a feeling he had forgotten. It was something that made his toes curl, ears prick and eyes widen with delight. Freedom he thought, reaching the railing. Almost.

Insects trilled which such ferocity that the whine of the air conditioners and the drone of the lights were drowned. Monte gripped the railing, leaning over the handrail. There was an intense heat coming from the lights but it struggled to make it past the first layer of foliage. The chamber must have been five hundred feet deep and still a few leaves brushed the ceiling with a persistent scratch.

“I had no idea…” said Monte breathlessly. It was a thrilling, seeing the drop beneath her toes with the thunderous pit of green.

Litmus stood next to Monte, his eyes sweeping over the thousand shades of green.

“A Mountain Ash,” he said, pointing to tallest of the trees. “The grandest tree living today. A shame no one else will ever see it.”

A glossy white trunk, larger than both their arms could reach around, slipped down through the canopy like a great street light.

“When they built the labs,” said Litmus, eyeing the roughness of the walls, “they found a chasm, two hundred and fifty feet across. It was perfect for this project, although it took the idiots a while to figure it out.”

“Decorum, Litmus,” Monte cautioned.

“First they tried to use it as a store house – but it was too deep. It spent the next few years as a giant aqueduct. Of course, the water drained straight through the rock. Limestone… Idiots…” he pointed to the ceiling to prove his point. “They destroyed most of the stalagmites and stalactites in the process but there’s a cluster in the corner over there.” He lowered his aim to the far side where Monte saw claws of rock, dripping down from the ceiling. “The floor as well.”

Monte pinned her curled hair back into place. “They told me about the experiments,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “But I never could have imagined such scale. Are there any more?”

Litmus shrugged, he didn’t know. “You’ve never seen anything like this before?” Litmus asked tentatively.

Monte’s eyes began to water from the moisture in the air. There was a potent fragrance coming from below. It was sweet, like vaporous honey. She averted her eyes, catching a flash of colour amongst the leaves.

Litmus’s heart fell.

“I was hoping,” he turned to her and waited for Monte to return the gesture. “I was hoping you might remember something. They said you wouldn’t, but I just thought maybe.”

“I appreciate the effort,” she said. “It really isn’t necessary though.”

“How can you say that, Monte? The way I see it, life is a memory. It must be horrible, not having anything –”

“As opposed to sulking over what I’ve lost – the people who have probably forgotten me by now?” she snapped. “I have a memory now,” she turned back to the trees, absorbing every moment. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t like it. Best not to feel anything at all.”

“You don’t mean – ” Litmus spun around. “Oh no…”

There was a shuffle of feet followed by a rasping cough as the owner of the lab tried to enter. Litmus’s fiddling had scrambled the lock. It wouldn’t take long for them to bypass it – lock picking wasn’t exactly a special skill amongst geniuses.

“Quickly!” exclaimed Litmus, racing to the staircase. It was wooden and horribly narrow with the depth of the cavern visible through each step. The half eaten planks bent under their weight as they began the descent.

Monte tried to protest but was pulled by Litmus down the first flight of steps. If they were caught, there was no way to explain what they were doing in somebody else’s lab. Maybe she could bluff her way out of it, but Litmus wasn’t even supposed to be able to leave his level, let alone break into other labs.

When she managed to lift her eyes from the stairs, she saw that they were coming up on an ante-platform constructed from the same timber as the stairway. The purpose of this break in the stairs was to house an antique, wrought iron lift. It swung on its cable as they approached. Monte shook her head vigorously.

“Kidding me…” she heaved, out of breath. “That thing’s ancient – no way am I getting on, in or near it!”

Litmus reached it first and pried open the gate. “Sure you are,” he grabbed her wrist and, with strength you wouldn’t credit him with, wrestled her inside. Seconds later the cage door clanged shut and the lift began its descent toward the forest floor.

It felt like freefalling with nothing between them and the trees but a delicate pattern of metal. Monte’s stomach floated while Litmus busily popped his ears every few seconds.

“Have you done this before?”

The look Litmus offered in return was a resounding, ‘no’.

“Never mind,” Monte hadn’t slackened her grip on the bars. “It’s better that I don’t know where you get to. Plausible deniability – it’ll save my job one day, if I live through this.”

“You’ll live,” Litmus joined her at the front of the lift. “It’d be rotten luck to die twice.”

“Almost die, Litmus. There’s a big difference – chiefly that the option of dying is still open.”

The bright lights of the main room where the botanical scientist was taking off his coat were extinguished as their lift hit the canopy. Countless trees and succulents clutched each other in a supple green net. The trunks of the larger trees were mostly hidden by creepers etching their way upwards, digging into the bark with curved thorns. Tiny flowers adorned the branches where nests of orchids sprouted in showers of orange and pink, blooming and dying. Their hairlike roots wound around the smaller branches and occasionally spawned a second plant. The smaller plants were writhing, growing as they watched.

A Staghorn, larger than any Litmus had ever seen, hugged the girth of a tree. It must have weighed more than he did, which granted, wasn’t much of an accomplishment.

Litmus’s eyes widened as the dark green foliage gave way to a veil of fig tree roots. They hung together, fused into a forty foot waterfall.

“That’s a Curtain Fig,” he said, reaching a hand through the bars. Each spotted tentacle grew in search of the dirt below. “They age them artificially through an air born accelerant. Don’t worry, it’s plant oriented.”

“Better be…” she whispered back.

Litmus slipped his heavy lab coat off. It was soaked through from the humidity as was his skin. He found his hair plastered across his forehead and foolishly levered it free, resulting in a spiked fortress of hair. Monte was openly sweating, but did not seem to care as the lift came to a gentle stop on the forest floor. Litmus ignored the cry of the metal as he opened the door. A creeper quickly found the edge and tangled itself around the base of the lift.

Metal screeched as the lift’s motor churned, raising the lift off the ground and back up toward the ceiling. Litmus turned to stop it, but the metal bars slipped through his fingers, snapping the vine.

“Not good…” Litmus bent down and picked up the wriggling stem. It sprouted a springy appendage and softly draped itself over his finger. Litmus dropped it immediately.

Outcrops of Limestone peaked amongst the ferns. Monte strolled over to one, ducking under a leafy branch. The backs of leaves tickled her skin as she pushed through the floor cover. It was cooler down here.

He stepped out onto the decomposing leaves, smudging a cluster of fungi into brown depths. It was hard to believe that they were trapped in an underground facility with a view like this. Litmus watched Monte perch on a grey boulder. Patterns of light which had filtered through the many layers of dense life, tessellated again and again over the ground and their tiny figures. This place felt old. The size of the trees, their immensity… It was all the product of experiment.

“It’s so real,” she said, stretching out over the rock. “How old is this project?”

Litmus chanted a few numbers, carried the one and then said, “Sixty-three years, roughly.”

“No wonder you like to remember.” Monte picked a small flower growing over the rock. Sticky sap dripped out of the severed end – it felt good against her dried skin. Somewhere above, a gentle thunder sounded as artificial rain pounded on the leaves of the canopy. Before long the world around them started to drip. Heavy beads of water trickled down the arms of plants and settled on the forest floor. Her light canvas shoes sunk into the leaf litter and she thought she felt an insect’s soft tread over them.

Her friend smiled and looked up into the trees. He felt safe down here and enjoyed the occasional drop of water running over his skin. His lurid green shirt and worn brown jeans made him look like some kind of strange, stunted plant, considering how to reach the light. Monte smiled and examined the limestone outcrop. There was another, slightly larger just in front. Several more peaked out from the undergrowth, dotted amongst the fernery. This place, despite its decor, was still a cave at its essence and the steep drops of the floor made its hostility clear. Exploring down here would be unwise.

“What now, genius?”

Litmus scratched his head, taking a cautious step forward to lean on a tree. “Now we hope that there’s another way out of here.”

~^*^~

Mace stared at the mud covered pair at his door. Soggy foot prints evaporated from the hallway behind them accompanied by large splatters of water where their coats leaked. It was just after lunch, and they had been missing for the better part of the day.

“Where have the two of you been?”

Monte looked up at him with pleading eyes, her face flushed so badly that the tiny veins in her cheek pulsed. She had been forced to call in ill after Litmus ‘quick venture’ had destroyed her busy schedule. There was nothing more she wanted to do than hide – or catch up on some sleep. Lying to an expert was pointless, so she said nothing.

“So it’s okay for you to roam the other levels…” he said accusingly, purposely blocking the entrance to the lab.

Sometimes she felt as if he were her superior, instead of the other way around. “I didn’t steal anything,” she replied, justifying herself.

Mace reached forward and plucked a slater beetle from her shoulder. “Not true,” he said, flicking it into the hallway where it flipped itself over and zoomed off.

“I’m only here to return a possession of yours,” said Monte, nudging Litmus forward. Litmus stumbled toward the door.

“Traitor…” he mouthed over his shoulder at Monte, who only prodded him again.

The scientist at the door eyed them both. Litmus and Monte were a total, utter wreck. Muddy, soggy, and decidedly dank.

“Urgh… get inside before a cleaner recycles you.”

The back collar of Litmus’s lab coat read, ‘HANDLE WITH CARE’ in scrawled writing, clearly a parting gift from its previous owner. Unfortunately, it had succeeded in cementing Litmus’s nickname, ‘Precious’ – something he despised.

“In you pop Precious, mind your head,” said Mace, hauling Litmus into Lab 47 by the collar.

Litmus eyed Mace in warning.

“It was an accident,” the small man muttered, as he vanished into the lab under protest.

“Five hours is a catastrophe,” corrected Mace. “Next time you take me with you.”

HALLWAYS AND ACCIDENTS

The hallway at the outskirts of the level was forgotten, unloved and seldom used. Most of the halogen lights that traced their way along its sprawl of ceiling had given out. Close on forty labs were sunk into the walls, their doors locked and covered with a coral-like growth no doubt some form of lichen flourishing in the wet environment.

A shuffle of feet made their way across the cement floor accompanied by heavy breathing. Every step was a struggle while a strange scraping noise kept time with the slow movement, metal scratching a gash into the ground.

The corridor shuddered in the presence of the creature. Cold water dripped down every wall and off the ceiling accompanied by the occasional leafy tentacle of some rock dwelling plant. The creature’s nose turned at each drop as they fell in a persistent rhythm. Slow, quick-quick and then one heavy drop with its massive body sharpened around the base and bulging out at the top against the air. It parachuted awkwardly, breaking a thousand times over when it hit a fungal mound.

Benny limped below one of the fragile lights which flickered fearfully, illuminating his hunched body in fractured bursts of light. His stature was curved but wide. He moved with a constant tilt, favouring his left side like he might fall if he were to straighten. Long pants covered the heel of his shoe with unravelling edges while a sweater that had lost its collar, stretched over his shoulder blades and past an unnatural hump which grew with each year he spent hidden away.

Michael lay over Benny’s shoulder, motionless. Clothed in a dusty leather jacket ripped under one of its sleeves and a pair of leather jeans that had small holes littered down their legs, he breathed steadily.

Mud coated Benny’s face where he had leant against the walls of the corridor. His brow ridge was pronounced while his eyes sank underneath, peering out from their protected positions. They rummaged through the faint light, watching to make sure that he was alone.

Satisfied, the dilated voids accustomed to perpetual darkness, shrank to tiny points. It was a memory, so precious an occurrence that Benny came to a halt in its presence. He was in a forest. A large fig tree stretched its heavily laden branches which tangled with the other trees. Children clambered over them, traversing their way through the heavy foliage to claim the fruit that nestled between the clumps of green. The children laughed while simple conversations passed between the women waiting below with woven sacks, full of figs. Their words knotted like the branches of the trees. A boy, too young to be afraid, slipped.

Benny’s eyes expanded, sad and distant. To him the world appeared that little bit darker as the sweet figs faded back into the cement walls of the corridor.

The weight on his shoulder shifted, awaking to darkness.

Michael breathed. Air flooded back into his lungs, reviving him from what felt like sleep. Before he could think, his eyes rolled. There was intoxicating perfume upon the air – an ancient reek of solitude. It caused his body to writhe between want and pain. For a moment his eyes flicked open. His wrists and ankles pained and a rag obstructed his weak breath which tasted of metal and mud. The only thing he could remember was the ground rushing toward him and his heart racing as the world closed in.

Benny shifted Michael back into position, as if he were no more than a sack and then ducked under a trickle of water, licking it from his lips.

As Michael closed his eyes he saw the sun rushing down to meet the land and himself, falling. Then there was darkness.

“…thick,” muttered Benny at the walls. Poor soul, he could not help it. He had no other to talk to and so the walls had become his reluctant friends. Unlike many in the labs, Benny was unable to feel real affection for their sand and water. By ‘friend’ he meant that they were always there to listen, even if he hated their every turn.

“The world’s thick with ‘em an’ they en’ up down ‘ere.” His shoulders expanded as his withered lungs sucked in the spore laden air. The creature on his back listened to the steady thud of his heart, barely awake.

“Dirtyin’ this place like we’re som’ kina-” Benny paused, shifting the weight – Michael, on his shoulders. “Som’ kina pit. A pit for the filth, but we, we’re mor’n that.” The heartbeat quickened slightly.

The pressure built inside Michael’s head until his thoughts merged.

Benny felt the body give in over his shoulder. Finally, Benny thinks, preferring the dead weight. “You can’t be safe really, on’y think you are.” The creature coughed, the air too wet for its lungs. “Even a maze’ll kill you, when there’s only you inside. Them walls, the darkness…”

Around them, fresh water followed the hairline fractures in the cement. It pooled in pockmarks where plumes of moss exploded and lichen unfurled. The dim light of this universe was just enough to coax life into existence as they passed.

~^*^~

Mace picked up the last scrap of mess from the floor and fell into one of the couches. Finally, he had the lab to himself. Sighing, he closed his eyes and pulled one of the cushions to his chest. He was about to snore when a cold hand on his forehead startled him.

“Lucy?” he sat up too fast.

A bare foot girl was seated on the coffee table in front of him, reading a newspaper. Her red hair tumbled down to the tabletop in knotted strands while her moonlike eyes cruised across the singed pages.

Mace held his head as it filled with a dull pain. Lucy pulled her feet up onto the table top, discarding the newspaper.

“Miss me?” she grinned, wickedly. Her complexion was ghostlike. Lucy was always watching, picking out things from the background. At the moment her head was tilted so that she could see under the second couch. She slipped off the table and crawled across the floor where she found a gold sphere hiding under the couch’s shadow.

Mace reached for it immediately but she held it out of his reach, enjoying the sudden warmth it exhibited.

“Why are you here, Lucy?” Mace frowned, shuffling forward on the couch. His eyes followed the sphere as she threw it in the air and recaptured it. “Please don’t do that…” he added.

Lucy raised a curved eyebrow, flicking a blue eye in his direction. “Litmus isn’t here,” she stated, flipping her hand over to reveal the gold sphere gone.

Mace rubbed his forehead. “As you see,” he spread his arms, revealing an empty lab.

“Too bad then,” she smiled, crossing the experiment room.

The scientist stood up, cracking his neck as he watched her circle the experiment table menacingly. She lowered her head down to the blue surface and inhaled. Spreading both hands over its surface, she disappeared behind the table.

“Oy!” he yelped, stumbling over the couch. “Away from there!”

Mace pulled up from a jog as Lucy reappeared, a black cord draped over hand and along her arm like a pet snake. She stroked it several times, twisting it in her fingers.

“Look,” he reasoned, “I don’t know where he is, okay?”

Lucy cut through the plastic casing around the cord with her sharp nails, splitting and tearing it to expose the entwined copper wires. “You can’t hide him forever, Mace,” she snarled.

Lucy paused as a transparent object suddenly rose from the centre of the experiment and came to a stop, hovering in the air in front of her. It stayed there for a moment, spinning in a kind of orbit, and then fell back through the floor destined for the centre of the earth.

It was another one of their failures, trapped in simple harmonic motion, falling forever.

“Not making any progress, I see.”

“Beat it, Lucy,” Mace raised his voice, snatching the damaged cord from her.

She nodded, slipping her hands into her lab coat pockets. Her eyes caught sight of the waxy plant outside the foyer as she made her exit. Without stopping, she ripped one of its leaves free and let it fall to the floor along with the golden sphere.

Mace escorted Lucy, locking the door behind her on her way out.

THE EXPERIMENT

If parallel universes were true, then Lab 47 had been cheated. Who was it that got to say which bubble of non-descript chance formed the perfect reality? Surely there was a way to shop around – take a peek at the other endings. A road sign every now and then would have sufficed.

“Multiple realities do not offer multiple solutions.”

Litmus shook his head and pointed in protest at the book in Mace’s hand. “And Alternate Theory is still an idea!”

Mace snapped the book shut and slid it back into the shelf with a huff. “Idea…” he muttered, searching feverishly for another book.

Cheated or not, Lab 47 did score in some of the more subtle ways. Of all the labs on this level, they enjoyed relative dryness. Well, yes there were various assortments of fungi and moss creeping out from the imperfections of their walls but on the whole their lab lacked the cold streams trickling from the broken pipes which lined the ceilings.

With only two residents, Litmus and Mace had a spare room which they long ago turned into a makeshift library. Several rows of lost furniture had been convinced to pose as bookshelves while the books themselves came in servings of old, new and ancient. They were in the processes of deciding whether to adopt a fourth category of ‘obscure’ but were as yet unable to procure suitable candidates.

Their foyer was a former cool room for chemical substances. Some genius in Lab 47’s significant history decided to move the entrance so that this space became a useless holding area for guests. The guests found this alteration distressing and developed the need to huddle together when left inside.

From there, the floor plan opened out into the main experiment room where Mace and Litmus spent most of their time. The couches were the giveaway. Each was long enough to achieve a comatose state in whilst sumptuously warm. People often vanished between the cushions covered snugly by a tattered throw in the stretches of time where the bedroom felt like giving up. There was something distinctly different about sleeping on a couch – it was a less formal commitment. It was the light impression of the mind into the darkness but never quite consumed by it; the sun hanging low in the evening sky, restless on the edge.

Two bedrooms were packed to the side, barely more than holes burrowed off the main room. Litmus’s resembled a nest, filled with useless comforts that made it difficult to get a foot in edgeways. Their walls were painted shades bordering on black and one could not help but feel that between failures these rooms became hibernation areas. The only joy came from an oriental rug escaping Mace’s room, sprawled out over the floor and decades thick with cement dust.

A potted plant provided a dash of colour to the experiment room with its waxy leaves aimed at the ceiling. Mace glared at it suspiciously, wondering how it survived as neither he nor Litmus had a promising track record when it came to keeping things alive. One of its leaves caught Mace as he strode across the floor, his head tilted in concentration. He stopped, untangled himself with a scowl, and then continued on his way.

Having given up on the library, Mace’s soft tipped pen tapped the electronic screen of his clipboard, selecting various items of interest from its slender strip of phosphorescent material which streamed information. He wished that he could remove the countdown bar at the top which enjoyed informing him that they were a year over their due date for their experiment.

Lab 47 was cold today, not that it had weather per say, but there was a definite difference in the temperature of the air from one month to the next. The lighting mimicked the effect, brightening to compensate which only served to make the corners of the room darker. It felt like a rainy day except there were no windows in the labs. No outside to speak of. Only cement and filtered air.

They had a thousand feet of dirt above their heads, so in a way, they were grateful for the walls that held it back. Being trapped was better than being squished, or so thought Mace. At least they were kept busy with humanity’s problems, it stopped them for staring at the ceiling too much.

Mace readjusted his coat as it caught between his legs, interfering with his stride. There was an impressive physique buried somewhere under there with its only fault being the gradual procession of time.

He scanned down the clipboard, finishing by reading out a trail of numbers to the room.

“…all within acceptable limits. With a bit of luck this might actually work,” he saved the data with a satisfied grin. “Make a nice change and we wouldn’t have to renovate that lab afterwards,” he said, as if it might be a legitimate threat. Indeed it was; Mace remembered the event vividly because he had spent those two weeks sleeping on the floor amongst the smouldering debris.

Mace let his hand run gently against the wall as he turned the corner, using the surface to guide him as he read.

Mace was not smiling, but the creases in his skin suggested that it was an action which he had engaged in, often too. You could tell by the way each line curled around the edges of his eyes, sweeping the skin beside his mouth before disappearing beneath his hair. It was impossible to guess his age, though the twinkle in his eye suggested that there was still a child in there somewhere.

“Tell me something that I don’t know,” demanded Mace on approach. He stepped sideways to avoid a pile of tools and again for a curiously empty cage. A gaudy blue held pride of place, iridescent in the light. The table had been moved, pulled out further from the wall so that people could gather at the sides. Mace shielded his eyes from it as he came to a stop.

Monte shrugged when Mace asked after Litmus.

“I’ve been here ten minutes and I’m yet to see him,” she said, with her arms folded over her chest. “I don’t see your so-called experiment either. Rules are rules Mace, you’ve got to give me something today or my boss’ll force me to –”

“To?” Mace prompted. “Come on Monte, enough with the empty threats.”

She was going to correct him when a commotion in the kitchen caught their attention.

Litmus was busy doing something scientific over the sink. With a flurry of panic, he raced through into the experiment room clutching a beaker of tea. Effortlessly, his knees crumbled beneath him and Litmus was under the table. He set the beaker on the cement beside and blew on his scalded fingers. The plaster was gone from his smallest yet he still felt the need to hold it out at strange angles, protecting its fragile bone.

Mace flinched. Monte, upon seeing Litmus for the first time in weeks, let her mouth hang agape.

“You’re clean!” she declared in shock. Indeed he was. Litmus’s body was covered by a white lab coat. Not brown, green, bluish or pink but actual white.

“Stole it, washed it, returned it,” shrugged Mace with a smug look. “Would’ve washed him too but he’s harder to catch.”

“You know who to call if you need help with that,” she whispered back.

Litmus hollered something about being ‘almost finished’. He took hold of a thick black cord which he then sliced with a Stanley knife, removing the plastic insulation.

There – the lines thickened beside Mace’s mouth. His eyes glanced down, covered by expressive lids while his left eyebrow rose above the other. A warm smile emerged matched by deep eyes glistening under the lights.

“Litmus,” he said, “I distinctly remember a similar statement from you three years ago.”

It hit Monte all of a sudden that the mess on top of the table was their experiment. Whatever ‘it’ was occupied the entire table and was essentially a mass of wires orbiting each other. She thought that it looked a bit like a motionless galaxy.

Monte jumped back when the table shuddered. Litmus used it to haul himself from the floor, compressing the mess on top enough to see the others. It was taller than Litmus, but Mace could peak over its crest if he straightened.

Two sets of eyes peered back at Litmus.

“Are you done?” asked Mace.

Litmus’s eyes gleamed, an intoxicating world sparkling beneath their curtains.

“Done what?” he replied, looking about the room vacantly for the question he didn’t really hear to begin with. The scientist was mad, brilliant and presently confused, caught off guard by his audience.

“Tell you want Monte, you can have him for two conical flasks and a car battery.”

Litmus’s sleeve dragged through something dank on the desk and Monte realised that his cleanliness would not be a permanent state. She shook her head, “No deal.”

Mace sighed, “Who knows, maybe he has finished and just neglected to tell us.”

Monte took a few steps back, wary of the tangle of cords snaking their way off the table toward her. He stole a glance in her direction which she returned, hesitantly at first. Grudges were difficult to hold with embellished glimpses which lingered that fraction too long.

Satisfied, she lowered her eyes. There was a patch worn into the ground where she had been standing, waiting for something interesting to happen. It was the same patch she stood in for three hours months ago when they’d called her for a similar demonstration. The only thing entertaining on that occasion was an escaped lab mouse tearing between rooms with Mace hurrying after it, failing miserably in his attempts to capture it. It took the pair of them three days of careful planning to build a mousetrap. They stole cheese from the community kitchen and set up their elaborate death machine at the rodent’s last known location. Sick on their own pride, they stumbled back to the experiment room only to find Litmus’s cat with a tail dangling out its mouth. Later, there was a snap and a yelp putting Litmus’s finger back in plaster.

The rather dishevelled Litmus shrugged. Unlike Mace, Litmus’s coat appeared to be several numerals in excess of its occupant, drowning him. His sleeves were permanently folded to his elbows, fastened by gold safety pins. Tufts of his light brown hair stood out from behind the contraption, visible as he ducked and parried the wires of their latest prototype into submission.

“I wish you’d hurry up, Litmus. I’m sure that poor Monte didn’t assign her entire morning to our company.” The ends of his words dragged a little, as if with thought.

Monte’s eyes flicked up at once, observing without comment, Mace’s tone.

“Actually,” she said, bending down beside Litmus, “you’d be surprised the portion of my life assigned to you lot.”

Litmus’s little bubble of merriment trembled with Monte’s sudden proximity. Unsure of what to do, he chose to stop breathing and stare back at her cheeky wink with frightened awe. He had a cord in one hand and a screwdriver in the other, both of which shook slightly.

With the last crawl of breath from his lungs he muttered, “Really…?” to which Monte nodded.

She reached forward with her sleeves pulled over her hands and retrieved the beaker of tea, placing it safely on the table as she rose.

There had always been two great mysteries in science fiction.

The first had to do with the ability of a carbon unit who was aesthetically undesirable, unwisely curious and worryingly attached to strings of alpha numeric phrases to score hot dates ahead of Mr. Multi-Dimensional-Verse. Extenuating circumstances aside, this anomaly gave scientists the world over (and in this case, under) hope.

The second, admittedly less interesting mystery was the tendency of people out of phase with their environment to fall through the floor. A serious problem for Lab 47. Things had been falling through its floor for years now.

Litmus decided that if life was anything like fiction, he would have little trouble with the first mystery and so decided to devote the rest of his existence to discovering the truth of the second.

Monte sidestepped, catching Mace’s outstretched arm and with it his attention. “Before you go-”

He mumbled something in reply, attempting to escape.

“Where did you get to?” she quizzed him with a severe look. “You’ve been a stranger lately.”

The Quantum Labs, was his silent answer, stealing things. She knew it, he knew it and the stolen item obscured by the rat-nest looking mess, knew it.

Mace lifted his gaze to her. His dark hair fell forward in loose curls peppered with grey at their edges. A grin slipped through. “Busy, busy,” he replied evasively, giving a nod in the direction of the ‘experiment’.

“I’ve been busy too,” she curled her lip wickedly. Her eye-line fell to the electronic clipboard in his hand and settled, staring enviously. “Although I wouldn’t have missed this for the world – well, this version at least.”

“But you would tell me if Sam and George did a swiftie and swapped versions on us, wouldn’t you?”

“If it gives you comfort, believe what you like.”

“Comforting…”

There was a reason Monte kept a close eye on these two, and it was not strictly to do with the company. Mace and Litmus had a reputation for disruption. They personified it to the extent that people cried; ‘Mace!’, ‘Litmus!’ or both in times of acute agitation – even if the pair had not been remotely involved in the cause. Some people said that the two inhabitants of Lab 47 were purposely malicious; Monte figured that they were just bored.

“I’m still at a loss as to what it is you two have been up to. Trevor said that you’ve been happily burning money. Did he mean that literally, or was he just being funny again? I can never tell with that one. Comedy isn’t his strong suite.”

“He doesn’t have a suit,” replied Mace disdainfully.

“Of course,” she was undeterred. “I have it on good authority that the money doesn’t belong to anyone we know. By all means,” she spread her arms, “carry on.”

“Intend to.” Mace threw a small object at Litmus. “Monte doesn’t have time to wait for the apocalypse. You’re ready now whether you believe it or not.”

Litmus’s bottom lip quivered.

“As Sector Manager she can clean up any disaster that unfolds. Accidents are her speciality, remember?”

“Reminds me,” she slipped something into Mace’s hands.

“What’s that – oh, come on!”

“Everyone has to fill it out. Take you a moment.”

Mace frowned as he read aloud. “Will your experiment endanger the Earth? Yes/No/Possibly.”

Litmus hovered over Mace’s shoulder. “If ‘possibly’ proceed to Question 8 – what’s Question 8?”

“Finish what you’re supposed to be doing!” he waved his lab partner away.

Litmus retreated to the other side of the lab, taking Monte with him under some protest. “If anyone’s interested, I’m flicking the switch.” He announced, raising the control with his finger on the button.

“Flicking the – parallel chaos! Wait ‘till I’m out of the way!” Mace yelped, dashing away.

“So help me benevolent entities if you destroy anything valuable…” Monte breathed into Litmus’s ear.

Litmus dropped the remote control in fright.

“Litmus,” she scowled.

“Oh, for the peace of the universe!” Mace swore, joining them. We’re never going to ‘shift’ if you break it!”

Litmus made amusing hand signals as he tried to convey Mace’s meaning to a bemused Monte. At this moment he was shifting purposely across the floor while his hands accentuated his movement. If nothing else, it was cute, so she smiled encouragingly. Eventually Mace clipped him over the head.

As Litmus retrieved the remote control from the ground, Monte noted that its rattle was more pronounced. Mace nodded in his lab partner’s direction. Litmus held the control out toward the experiment and depressed the button dramatically.

Holding each other tightly, the three looked on at the device. The experiment consumed the table with its excess spilling out over the polished surface and onto the floor. It was a mass serpent of tangled wires, twisting around an ugly bulge at its heart, encapsulating the deflated soccer ball.

The missing soccer ball.

Monte had just enough time to narrow her eyes before something happened.

The deflated soccer ball flickered soundlessly into translucency between the cords where it hovered momentarily. Its crystal-like outlines were difficult to grasp from the background. A moment later the cords slacked and the soccer ball proceeded to fall through the table and floor respectively.

Its soundless exit left the room and the experiment awed.

Limp cords swung over the empty space and a small trail of smoke spiralled upwards. There was no trace of the soccer ball, no evidence that it had ever existed.

A loud bang under their feet startled the group.

“Bloody idiots!” A voice from underneath shouted. “Fell through me bloody head!” Their below-neighbour pounded the ceiling mercilessly. “Mace! Lit-muuus!”

Six beady eyes stared in astonishment at the experiment. The Quantum level’s soccer ball was simply gone. Very gone.

Litmus lowered his remote control.

“So oops…” Litmus whispered, watching as smoke formed a layer across the ceiling and then sunk with the cold air to sit frustratingly at shoulder height.

“They can kiss that soccer ball goodbye,” said Mace, as his eyes began to water with the haze.

Monte poked them both sharply for an explanation.

Litmus covered a yelp and side-stepped out of her reach clutching the remote control to his chest while Mace moved forward, not afraid of her finger now digging into his chest.

“Well,” he frowned. “We were experimenting with transforming matter into energy, inducing a phase shift.”

“Walk through walls ala sci-fi?”

“We call it ‘shifting’,” Litmus shifted across the floor in the same manner as he had earlier, only now Monte understood his meaning.

“Exactly. Just like our brief says.”

Monte wasn’t exactly sure what phase-shifting was supposed to look like, but she guessed it wasn’t anything like this. “And – did it work?”

Litmus’s eyes widened, his hands clasping together in front of him. His fragile finger stuck out on its own. “Sort of.”

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?” She eyed them both suspiciously. “Like the universe is ‘sort of’ infinite or your heads are ‘sort of’ attached to your spinal columns?”

The younger scientist’s knuckles went white. The lab partners edged closer to one another sharing a, ‘how do we get out of this?’ look common with scientists the world over.

“Well,” said Mace carefully, “this device brings the matter out of phase with its environment but gravity’s still there, sucking it down. Therefore it, well, it fell through the floor.” His speech faltered and he trailed off.

“Fell through to where?”

“It should be making its way toward the centre of the Earth where it will kind of…”

“…stay,” Mace finished Litmus’s sentence, trying not to sway with worry.

“For how long?” Monte liked the sound of this less and less.

Mace searched for a gentle version of the truth that did not involve ‘several’, ‘billion’ or ‘years’. Failing, he decided against divulging anything at all. “Hard to say.”

“Several billion years,” said Litmus brightly.

The elder scientist shrugged, conceding the point, “At least.”

“Until the sun explodes.”

Monte crossed her arms tightly over her chest and took a step towards the pair. Her eyes went black as smoke continued to obscure the lights. There was an unsettling smile on her face when she thought about the surprise she had planned for Lab 47 which would be arriving shortly. She was their Sector Manager and when these two created problems, they inevitably became her problems. Well, this morning Monte was not in the mood for more problems.

Brushing past them, she prowled over to the wall on the other side of the lab where odds and ends lay in wait. Tiptoed, Monte took a heavy looking cog from the shelf. Dust had made its metal dull. With great effort, she lifted it above her head and then let if fall to the floor with a tremendous crash. The banging and swearing below came to an abrupt halt.

“Much better,” she whispered. Monte turned back to the frightened scientists.

“This is your advancement to human technology for the month?” There was no need to raise her voice to fill the pair with guilt. “The temptation to punish you for the theft of Quantum property is rapidly returning gentlemen. What happens when my boss tries on his new Phase-Shift-Suit, falls through the floor and ends up in the centre of the Earth? Not to mention that one of these days the Quanta’s are going to work out how to exact revenge on all the things you’ve stolen from them over the years – and don’t think you can crawl to my office complaining about some alternate version of yourself running amuck. Don’t laugh; I’ve had to deal with that twice already.”

Litmus was far from concerned. “If and when they work out how to use the lift.”

“If and when I let them out,” she finished firmly. For most, each level of the labs was a prison, but Litmus and Mace had an incurable ability to break free and explore – to her expense, the many levels on offer. With each new level they added to their repertoire, Monte added a couple of black marks against their names. Too many to count. They had gone beyond punishment.

“In summary, I think that it’s too early to recommend human trials. And you –” she pointed to Mace in particular. “Stay away from Level 7 or I will punish you. You’re setting a bad example for the children.”

They both looked at Litmus – hardly a child. It was their long running joke as he had been in the labs the shortest amount of time between the three of them.

Mace looked Litmus from nose to toe before muttering, “Wise.”

~^*^~

“Monte…” Litmus raced to the foyer of the lab, ducking around her before she could reach the door. She blinked, nearly set off balance. He apologised and said, “Almost forgot – have you got a moment?”

PRELUDE TO NIGHT

“This place ‘s falling apart. Been here three years and me wall’s crackin’ everywhere and that – look at that!” The be-speckled man stabbed the air with his finger, pointing at a sizable hole in the wall beside his bed which was in the process of crumbling. “Not good enough. I wan’ new quarters and an assistant that doesn’ smell like mint tea.”

A door deeper in the lab slammed decidedly shut – its owner apparently enraged by the whole affair.

Monte rubbed the ear which had taken the brunt of the man’s complaints. With all the scientific research going on down here, you’d think that someone would be smart enough to create clones – then she could send one of them to listen to hours of this trivial nonsense.

“Look,” Monte started, depositing a bucket of do-it-yourself plaster on his bedroom floor. “Everyone has to have a lab partner – believe me, you could do much worse than Miss Naletti.” She raised a hand before he could interrupt. “No – you can’t call her Mint and if you don’t start being pleasant, I’ll find another lab partner to replace her – then I guarantee that you’ll have real problems to complain about at which time I’ll be happy to come back and continue this discussion.”

The room went quiet as the man stood with his mouth agape, stunned. A few quiet sobs from the accompanying room trickled in, deepening Monte’s frown. There was a moment when Monte thought that she caught a glimmer of remorse in his eyes – but the room was so dim that it could have been plain old defeat.

“What’s…” he pointed at the bucket, eyes low and voice trailing away.

“For the hole,” replied Monte sharply.

He nodded at it before adding, “In’there maintenance people – n’n stuff?”

Monte crossed her arms, “You’ve been here for three years. When was the last time you saw someone who wasn’t a scientist?”

He was about to say, present company excluded, but caught himself. Without further protest, the man picked up his bucket, which was considerably heavier than he had expected, and waddled toward the hole in his wall. Monte watched him for a few seconds, wondering if there was any way to find Miss Naletti a new lab partner and save her from this butt-crack exposed, pale looking menace. If he wasn’t the best biotechnical advisor…her thoughts dwindled off – it was pointless hoping.

Her next meaningful conversation was with her ear piece as she strode down the corridor, dodging busy individuals with their noses up, bustling items from lab to lab.

“We have a maintenance crew – don’t we?” she half screamed, to carry her voice over the roar of the corridor. The level of noise was as unbelievable as the acrobatic action performed by a scientist balancing five trays of samples on one arm. The contents looked sinister so she gave him a wide birth, throwing herself on the mercy of oncoming hallway traffic.

“’Course we do,” came the swift reply from her boss. Monte asked him to repeat everything he said which, surprisingly, didn’t annoy him. “You need one?” he asked cheerfully.

“No. I’m good,” she replied.

After an uncomfortable pause, the static on her head set subsided. “As always Monte, these check-ins are the highlight of my day.”

She had no doubt that they were. Still, Monte hung up on him without a ‘goodbye’, slipping into the next lab on her list.

~^*^~

Another current of sand skimmed off the edge of the cliff. Warm air pockets picked the swirling pattern up, throwing it through tumbles and spirals until it was little more than a pretty glimmer of gold at sunset.

Stars began to peak through the carpet of sky. There was a sense of fragility, balanced on the edge of darkness as if waiting for the light to drain away from the desolate area.

A plain stretched out behind the cliff, basking in the shifting light. It was scared by trails of dead waterways, meandering their way through what had been dense forest before ending in a final gush over the edge of the falls. Years of vicious winds had eroded the area into a flat panel of dirt that bridged parallel ranges now having more in common with rolling hills.

The edge of the cliff was the only aspect to have been improved by time. Clawing winds had sharpened its height while a layer of hot air sat along the edge, blurring its jagged rocks and disguising the moment where the ground touched nothing.

The last stages of sunset dragged on. Harsh colours blurred into pastel tones while lone clouds dissected themselves from the group and formed grotesque patterns on the sky’s darkening shell.

Resting not far from the sun, a layer of burnt orange observed the edge of the world – no doubt wondering what frightful future the evening would bring.

The sun sank, catching the cliff. Its once invisible line glowed brightly until there was no mistaking the edge. It was definite – absolute.

A bike powered forward into view, churning the sand around the rocks. From above, a second desert could be seen to continue below the cliffs. These two deserts, appearing identical – kissed. Their only estrangement was the latter’s close proximity to the horizon. In the morning, though Michael was convinced it could never come, they would trade. He could already see the world tipping over and one horizon replacing the other.

His bike was impossibly small in the surrounds. Michael was a boy tired of the world and all its noise. He thought only of what it would be like to be free of it. He kept his eyes wide, staring up at the sky where the sun was steadily setting. He imagined a violent freedom, potent enough to preserve his mind through whatever fate he chased toward the cliff edge.

His motion created a rush of air against his skin. Michael could not hear the roar of the engine, but he did detect its vibration beneath him through the rubber of the handlebars. There was a power about it, tangible like the pressure of the wind, but never quite within reach.

He wanted music. He wanted to hear the music that conducted the whole world and those beyond, the vast vacuums included. It was the sound of the sky moving as it howled through the cracks of the cosmos. To Michael, there had always been nothing but silence.

He is always out of step, tripping while the universe rises and falls gracefully past. Even now the sand and sun run fast or pause with the tempo. Michael realised long ago that his silence was a resonance free from the common boundaries of sound. It became a contradictory reality where the ultimate noise was a repressive hush. If he could not have music – he would have nothing at all.

Michael approached the edge in chase of this music. His world moved inescapably forward as he reached for it. He needed it and the want of it consumed him as the cliff edge approached.

Suddenly, Michael’s tires lost contact with the ground. The sand roared past, overtaking him as his bike lunged off the edge and sailed into the air toward the sun.

Michael closed his eyes feeling the ground rush away behind. His stomach sank as his bike rode the nothingness. He knew that his forward motion was fighting the ruthless gravity below, tracing out a perfect arc through the air. Michael let go of the bike, extending his arms into nowhere.

The frames of the world slowed. Michael let his head slip back into the wind and from his bike he felt the Earth move beneath. The whole of existence condensed into a dusty rock, spinning out of control. Smudges of blue and green bled in while Michael remained stationary, enveloped by the gust.

In this strange existence, precariously suspended between realities, Michael thought he heard a string of notes and the brief swish of a conductor’s baton.

In the age of reason, human thought flourished in a world whose walls were flush to the ground. One could not scale such walls, they must be leapt upon.

Michael leapt.

Freedom – consuming the moment it was possessed.

The burnt orange was left, imprisoned on the evening. The world stared, stripped bare. An empty cliff darkened with the land while the sky held on to the last colour, knowing that it was too late to bring back the day. The sun was gone, and the cliff edge silent. The ground cooled as the desert waited for its creatures to emerge, but they were not yet ready for the night and stayed hidden beneath the dust.

QUANTUM THEFT

The door to the Quantum lab hung ajar. Nothing could be seen beyond its bare exterior other than a sharp pillar of light as the metal rectangle swayed, ever so slightly, on its hinges. Either side a cement corridor swept out, completely devoid of life. A slab of light above hummed absently, bored with its existence as air ventured forth from the vents that lined the ceiling.

Artificial glow slid from under the innumerable doors, scattering into a soft haze along the floor. The walls, feeling lonely, tapered in toward one another, perspective warping their dimensions into an Escheresque landscape where curves answered the riddles of right angles and impossibilities brushed past, untroubled.

In the quiet, every molecule of rigorously disinfected air tensed.

The distinctive sound of a precious object breaking was swiftly followed by a bead of its glass tumbling out door 723 with sharp ‘clinks’. It spun for a moment, accompanied by a thousand fragments of light racing across the walls, lost in their own brilliance.

A ‘crunch’ ended the display abruptly as two men in lab coats hit the floor at a run, flooding the corridor with light as they made their escape.

“Bad idea,” muttered Litmus, sliding through stray puddles of grime.

The older scientist shook his head, using a hand on the wall beside to steady himself. His chest heaved throwing his shoulders back so that his breast plate could expand and suck in the air.

“Fantastic idea,” he exhaled, letting his head fall back in utter glee.

They giggled like naughty school children, though fully adult. Clutched under Mace’s arm was a sorry looking soccer ball bearing all the appearance of a much loved possession, presently a much stolen possession.

This unlikely pair of gentlemen made short work of the cement corridor, following its oblique lay with practiced ease. The soccer ball’s owner shrank into the background of the ever darkening walls, his livid threats losing pace with the thieves.

“Mace! Litmus! You’ll pay!” A tall, twisted looking professor hit the wall in frustration. He yelped, shaking his jarred hand in pain.

It was of no use. Mace and Litmus rounded the corner cleanly and piled into a waiting elevator. Litmus, the considerably younger and shorter of the two, tapped the ‘close door’ button several times before searching the panel beside.

‘MISCELLANEOUS’ was marked by gritty, silver letters and accompanied by a circular button that had been pressed one too many times in haste.

With great accomplishment, they both fell to the elevator floor breathing heavily. The lift lurched and they left the Quantum Level safely below them. Sweat pouring off his face, Mace threw the soccer ball at Litmus who grinned broadly at their takings. The scruffy scientist rolled the ball between his palms, casting his eye over the hand-made stitching.

“Now that is how you trade,” said Mace, his head falling against the elevator wall. Litmus nodded, his breath too heavy to reply.

~^*^~

In a different corridor, Dr. Monte Louise Charlton exited her lab backwards so as not to spill her morning coffee. It steamed pleasantly as she shuffled her electronic clipboard under her arm and pulled the door to her lab shut.

Wincing, she shifted the thin Styrofoam between her fingers before taking a sip. It was early in the labs. The lights were soft and most of the doorways, closed. Standing alone, the eeriness ever-present on the air welled up around her. As the year wound down it grew stronger, becoming a seasonal stench. It stuck in her throat – so she drowned it with more coffee.

Monte rested her eyes for a moment. In a few hours the slumbering hallways would transform back into their natural state. Generally, they were conduits, bustling with chaos – passageways swelling with bodies joined in a performance one could easily mistake as exotic insects tapping their feelers and crawling over each other. The underground world was kept alive by these orchestrations. This way, Monte reasoned, the inhabitants felt less like rats and more like the people they used to be.

At least they had their memories – remnants of life outside of this underground labyrinth. She had only the softest whisper, a feeling that she had once been loved. Over a decade she had awoken in one of the corridors and had her life had been handed to her in a folder. Her name, profession and even the simple pleasures that should fulfil her day were detailed in Courier New. Flicking through the cheap pages, she saw only the distance between the print. That was a long time ago. She had learnt to adapt – accept and slip into the underground world without so much as a murmur.

Pushing a brassy strip of metal further into her mass of dark hair, Monte lifted her eyes to the lights along the ceiling. Once flickered unpleasantly, disrupting the rhythmic drone. She could almost reach it if she stretched gracefully to her full height.

As she turned her head, a determined strand of hair freed itself, relishing its escape by bouncing in a passing air current. Monte scowled, clipping it back into place.

Using her free hand to pick lint off her white coat, she lifted her cup out of the way as she pursued the unravelling thread with just a hint of obsessive urgency. A distant ‘ping’ went unnoticed as Monte hunted out the origin of the loose cotton.

Suddenly she was on her knees, overcome by a blur of white as two men in lab coats toppled her. Laughing, they raced through the corridor making enough noise to revive the slumbering residents of the labs.

One of the pair accidentally knocked the coffee and electronic clipboard from her hands, both of which crashed to the ground. The clipboard fizzled with sparks where the coffee seeped into its circuit boards.

Litmus managed to stay on his feet despite the collision and his general poor balance. He curved his neck to see Monte kneeling on the floor, waving smoke away from her clipboard.

“Oops,” he called to her mid-run. “Sorry Monte.”

Monte glowered fiercely but said nothing. Instead she examined the damage, sighing when she realised that neither the clipboard nor coffee were salvageable.

“Oy!” she yelled after Litmus. “All my – stuff…”

Litmus looked back again, stumbled into the wall and then continued on with an apologetic look.

A demanding beep ruined what was left of the morning peace. If only her pager would spontaneously collapse into a micro-black hole and pop from existence. Monte waited to see if it would but eventually gave in. No doubt its demanding tone was inextricably linked to the pair scurrying down the corridor into the darkness.

“Mmm. Uh ha,” she said to an enraged voice in her ear piece a few seconds later. “I know – all the time.”

Monte found a sharp crack splitting the grey of the wall beside her. Delicately, she brushed her fingers over it, finding a plume of unwanted moss starting to take root. She lifted it off the cement with her nails, scraping the moist leaves and roots away. “Children, I know,” she continued, flicking the green from beneath her fingernails. “You don’t have to tell me.”

Monte watched the pair. Her sharp, green eyes picked out their billowing lab coats from the converging walls. She did not want to know where they had been, but their fearlessness was more than a little unnerving.

Monte slid down the wall with her arms stretched along the cold concrete. Many years ago, a lost scientist had found a curious inscription whilst wandering the abandoned section of the labs. On the dank wall he made out a piece of advice which was now handed down to all new arrivals.

“In a maze we know the darkness, but not ourselves,” she whispered, now that she was alone. “We learn the ways of the walls and hear them conspire against us.”

Looking around, Monte thought she could hear them – the walls. They whispered when you were alone, telling you things that you should never hear. “In this, as in every darkness, there is an edge on which we balance.” Monte knew the edge well, it was drawn all over. “Fear is sharp and darkness slippery.”

A door down the hallway swung open and a confused head popped out. Monte winked and the man ducked back, probably to return to his bed. Beside her, a crackle and final wisp of smoke signalled the end of her clipboard. Monte thought she could feel footsteps disappearing into nowhere as the two scientists escaped to their lab.

“It does no good to run,” she muttered, hauling herself to her feet.

BOXES FULL OF NOTHING

“Fantastic!” a voice declared, trailing off in astonishment. Its owner, Litmus, was tucked away inside a modest laboratory whose cave-like structure concealed most things from curious eyes.

‘Lair’ may have been a better description as Lab 47’s sprawl twisted out of sight. Failed experiments laid ruined against the walls, scattered like bones along the path to the main room where their frequency increased to such a point that you had to step through them, cringing as they crunched underfoot.

On the far side of the large room, Litmus was busy rifling through a box of equipment, digging into the dense conglomerate with his bare hands. He shivered as metal and plastic seethed over his pale skin until he convulsed, withdrew and shoved the box off the table in disgust. It joined countless rejects, ripped apart and abandoned in front of the experiment table.

He squinted. Four harsh lights had been tacked to the ceiling above his head with rusted chains that creaked worryingly every time he paused. The brightness made his eyes shine, picking out flashes of grey in the turn of his nervous glance which was always shifting between movement and sound.

Litmus was a mousey creature, preferring to creep through the night rather than risk the brilliance of a fully lit laboratory such as this. It was the semi-darkness he liked – that point when the world blurred into a smear.

Dishevelled, his small figure hunched over the table with ears pricked, logging sounds from the surrounding room. Litmus twitched at the shuffle of feet over the cement. Moth-like shadows tracked over the wall behind, fluttering out of sight when he turned his head. Things toppled out of boxes and then rolled across the floor in search of corners. The electronic panels hummed. Voices from the lab below bickered as they had done for years.

Lab 47 never stilled.

Most of Litmus’s life had been spent scratching gibberish onto floorboards in his parents’ study or scurrying out of their reach when he was found, pen in hand. The grand houses of his childhood were vast caverns of secrets but hollow when it came to affection. He had kept to their edges, eyes down away from the chilling carvings which loomed out from the fire place mantle. The gargoyles glared back at him with pitted eyes and fangs of marble. By pure chance, inside this dusty world he discovered something to lord over; knowledge made his blood silk. The pursuit of it brought about rare acts of bravery – like allowing himself to be seen in the full light.

Litmus ran his paws over the sides of another cardboard box, daring the contents to pounce out at him before it was devoured.

The last few hours had consisted of precisely this; mindless searching for junk amongst the deluge. There was a sea of potential inside each box littered around the lab, stacked to the roof, and Litmus was determined to purge each of their secrets before the night was out.

His current victim spilt deliciously over its recyclable edges. Its greasy things were beautiful because they were rare. He saw them as atoms wafting between nothing; one useful relic forgotten in the chaos. They were arbitrary things, but he loved them with all his heart.

Litmus’s arms sank through the mess, disappearing to his elbows were they blackened with all manner of things unpleasant. There was a splatter of oil across the cement floor as an escaping object met its demise. Broken pieces hit the edge of the room, landing on a leather shoe. Its owner, a serene figure, exhaled painfully and then continued reading from an electronic tablet.

Litmus blinked as the blackness of the pile approached. Eerie peaks of wreckage were flanked by ranges of oddly shaped casings belonging to machinery long since determined obsolete. Sullied test tubes fought with vials of crystallised liquids for attention and a semi-toxic vapour swirled up through the glare.

With his nose in danger of joining the fray, Litmus tilted his head to the side for a rushed stutter of breaths.

“There are not enough shots in the world to protect you from what you’ll find in there,” sighed the only responsible adult in the room. Mace’s voice was silky, elusive even. He did not bother to look up from his reading – preferring the screen’s dull glow to the mess building around Litmus.

Litmus’s nose had already set his ears to ‘ignore’ and so he did not respond. The aroma of the box was old but there was more than just age seeping through the cracks. Its contents promised something better to chew on than the mindless simulations he had spent months running over.

His heart paused, constricting fearfully before his body fell forward, plunging into the box.

This time, objects poured onto the floor in a thunderous storm as Litmus’s headless body wiggled in. Something sharp scratched across his eyelids, grease gave his skin an unhealthy sheen while his lungs burned for air.

“I could have had the normal one,” muttered the other man, doing his best not to watch the carnage. His face was twisted in a scowl, lowering his eyebrows into a severe hedge that could do with a trim. “But I wanted the best. The most brilliant. The self taught genius.”

The table beneath the box groaned, its ancient wood sympathising with the cardboard as Litmus’s enthusiasm climaxed. A dull tear later, one side of the box gave way, spewing its contents onto the unimpressed table top. Litmus followed shortly after, set off balance as his hands rode the wave of greasy things. There he rested for a moment, sprawled over the pile of junk with his face buried on a nasty object.

He twitched again.

“Gotcha…” he breathed against the pile.

The tall man’s eyed rolled ceiling-ward.

“What’s the matter?” said lofty scientist, no longer able to resist a glance. Mace flinched instantly at his mistake.

“Matter: A flirtation of the elements,” replied Litmus confidently, as he pushed off the mess. He withdrew his arms to polish an item on his coat. It was a prize of hefty copper wire wound tightly around a ferrite core which looked as if it had been unkindly placed next to something hot and left to melt.

“I asked for an explanation – not a definition.” Mace returned his stern attention to reading. “If you do not begin speaking sense, I will be forced to drop you off in an abandoned corridor. Who knows what curious thing will pick you off out there…”

Litmus was unconcerned. “Knew there’d be one of you somewhere,” he cooed, rolling the transformer lovingly between his fingers, admiring its gleam. “Bit old, wrong size but oh…” he grinned, “you’re exactly what I need.”

“You can make love to it later,” growled the older scientist. “And don’t think you are keeping that. Piece of useless rubbish – honestly.”

“But it’s –” The transformer slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor where it was retrieved in a flash of brown. Litmus muttered something about grease to no one in particular and then placed it with the other salvageable objects in a large, open brimmed jar.

Mace eyed the container, plotting its inevitable demise. Horrified, Litmus covered the treasure protectively with his lab coat. He would have removed it from view completely save for the container’s extreme weight.

“I plan to use everything,” he protested.

“What you plan to do, Litmus, and what takes place can rarely claim relation. For instance –”

Mace continued with a trail of accusations concerning things that Litmus could not remember. The days in the underground labs were a bit of a smudge, with little to distinguish themselves from the endless cycle of monotone.

Instead of listening, Litmus leant on the experiment table for a moment to catch his breath. This hideous blue bench-top ran the length of the back wall and generally made those rare people who were brave enough to enter Lab 47 cringe in its presence. Its contrast with the cement walls was vulgar at best, while the saw-like marks that adorned the wood held disturbing images of its past life. Litmus rather liked it.

“Nothing like a bit of history,” he interrupted, realising that his coat was now caught on a rough edge. “It’s always out to get you.”

“It is not alone in its endeavours,” Mace assured the young man, watching Litmus smear something black into his skin. He raised his eyebrows in Litmus’s direction and then let his eyes drop to the man’s pointy nose with an expression of disapproval deeper than usual.

Litmus stopped rubbing at the fetching stain, shrugged and returned to his box which was splayed dramatically and quite frankly, not much of a box anymore. He picked through its contents with a sideways smirk.

You would have been forgiven for mistaking Litmus as a mechanic. There was a dirty rag tucked in the front pocket of his once-white-now-camouflaged lab coat while the large boots weighing down his skinny legs left black prints over the cement. Litmus kept several pens in his upper pocket – all of which were fashioned from lost bits of other pens, and refused to have his jeans taken up despite the material dragging to tatters on the floor.

Mace tapped the screen of his electronic clipboard, averting his eyes just enough to observe Litmus.

“Have you found it yet?” Mace inquired, still waiting on the object that had been the point of the search.

The shuffling noise halted.

Litmus’s eyes tracked over the pile. He had forgotten to look for … he ducked down beneath the desk, scanned the floor and frowned.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, scurrying around to the other side of the table. “No, no,” he stood up and tossed a few items aside before snatching a gold sphere from the corner of the table which had been working its way toward the edge for some time now. “Here it is.”

Mace freed himself from the wall and set his clipboard down on a convenient box. He took a few strides toward Litmus, extending his arm. Slender shadows pursued him on the opposing wall, breaking the light from above. As he came to rest, his hair settled on the collar of his lab coat whose brilliant white put the Cyphochilus beetle to shame.

Mace curled his fingers around the object dropped into his hand.

“Excellent,” he said, unable to find fault.

The sphere warmed immediately to his touch, demonstrating its mysterious conductive powers. He turned it slowly, feeling its weight shift around the liquid core. A moment later it became scorching hot, so he slipped it into one of his pockets and straightened his thigh-length lab coat.

“You work for me now,” Mace continued, with an austere stare. Litmus was in a state of constant motion, fidgeting and trembling at every sound. “Not for your own enjoyment.”

Litmus nodded, but Mace did not feel reassured.

“I know that I have told you this before,” Mace continued, “but sometimes I feel the need to clarify…”

Mace could not help but remember the day Litmus had tripped into Lab 47, breaking his little finger on the way through. It remained one of the more memorable entrances Mace had seen and, despite his reservations; it became a key reason for keeping the thing.

The elder scientist frowned inexplicably. He really must not think of his assistant as a pet. As Monte always said, it was a ‘poor work ethic’.

As an employee, Litmus was turning out to be an interesting burden. He was supposed to be a genius; as yet the only remarkable thing about the badly groomed scientist was that he had survived this long. Natural selection had decided to turn a blind eye to Litmus’s existence and Mace was hoping that there was a reason for it.

“How long have you been here, Litmus?”

Litmus looked around the Lab 47 and returned with a smile.

“Two weeks,” he replied, “three?” Litmus poked the remains of his box gingerly with a plastered finger.

“It is difficult to tell down here,” Mace began – not continuing until Litmus’s eyes dragged themselves from table. “You lose your sense of time and eventually what little purpose you started out with is forgotten. Your soul dribbles into the cracks of these walls,” Mace leant over to touch the wall behind Litmus’s horrid blue table.

Now that Litmus looked, he saw that the walls were tarnished with green and contained tiny fractures branching out from the roof. He was quite content to live in this box, crumbling walls and all. The lights could be a little dimmer – but he could fix that.

Mace’s face loosened, the edges of a smile cracking through his stony features.

Litmus grinned. Experiment time. Giving his mop of hair a shake, he cleared a space on the table by swiping his arm over it. Mace hopped back in horror, dodging the debris.

There was nothing more important than a new experiment, said Mace to Litmus daily, nothing that could be allowed to tear his attention astray. Not even his hair, which Litmus was convinced would abandon him regardless of the affection shown to it.

Mace turned back to the room. Lab 47 was in a state of crisis. Overfilled boxes of odds and ends were stacked precariously along the narrow walls with some piles grazing the modest ceiling. Several hours ago one hastily built tower had given way, showering what little floor space they had. Streak marks and scuffs decorated the concrete, darting out in all directions only to congregate in strange arrangements that bore a striking resemblance to bubble chamber patterns.

Mace’s eyes rested sadly on the floor.

“Apologies old friend,” he whispered, kneeling down to touch it. The surface was cold, sucking the warmth from his fingertips. “It’s for the best.”

There had been a steady trickle of boxes arriving at Lab 47’s door for hours. The pair of scientists were doing their best not to drown in them. The entire mess had been generously donated by other members in the labs – thus its unwanted appearance. In a ritual of sorts, these boxes were passed around for decades between the corridors until their contents found a nook, were melted down or inevitably pilfered as paperweights. Litmus, who was busy accumulating several of the latter, screeched a sneeze into the silence.

Mace’s desk might have been salvageable though the spilled contents of boxes, sagging folders, clustering dust particles and slippery trails of residue suggested otherwise. Clearing a patch, he found a brave post-it note affixed to his mug.

“Cliff again,” he said, as he peeled the item off and rubbed the glue with his sleeve. “Apparently he has decided to ransom our coffee. Not his best idea.” Mace shook his head. He would never understand that old man, always gazing up at the ceiling of his lab pretending to see the stars. “Some of us have real work to do.”

“I guess we’re going to his Astronomy lecture then…”

“Never,” Mace replied, defiantly ripping the note in two. “We can live without the coffee.”

Litmus did not look so sure.

Mace embraced a crate, sliding it off his desk and onto the floor. It sat there unopened, adorned with bright orange hazard tape and an additional warning of, ‘Dangerous Goods’ which served to keep trawling thieves at bay rather than accurately describe the box’s contents. ‘Mostly Useless Objects’ would have sufficed.

A new experiment was a big deal – a new idea. It was hope and the unknown, although many would argue that it was simply an excuse to make a mess and cause trouble.

Sadly, the donations which accompanied such an event rarely contained anything of use. Trade was the way of the labs, and the more junk you had, the better your chances. Litmus preferred to call it ‘shit’ but was repeatedly reminded that one could never underestimate the value of miscellaneous goods.

Sweat trickled over Litmus’s eyelashes as he excavated another object from the remains of another box.

“What do you think this is?” he queried, raising a segment of hollow tube to the light.

Mace wandered over to Litmus, slipping his hands into his lab coat’s generous pockets. His dull grey eyes were watered down with overuse, like two great marbles catching the light from their sun.

“Looks like –oh,” he stopped, backing away.

“What?” squeaked Litmus, brightly.

Mace’s once handsome face re-arranged itself into a concerned frown. “You should put that down, Litmus.”

Litmus practically threw the object at the table and rubbed his hands vigorously on his lab coat. The long cylinder rolled toward the edge of the bench with a lazy drone. Using a pair of tongs, Mace plucked it from freefall. He held it in Litmus’s direction, much to Litmus’s displeasure.

“Soaked in quantum radiation. See the black residue along the edges? Nasty stuff…” Mace sniffed it then instantly recoiled, shaking his head. The Quantum Department’s efforts to kill them had become more frequent.

“Good riddance,” said Litmus, as Mace threw it in the toxic waste shoot. “They really can’t take a joke.”

“I do not think it is our sense of humour they object to,” replied Mace, frankly.

Litmus shrugged. “You’re probably right.”

“Of course I am right,” Mace glared. “I am always right.”

“Prove it…” Litmus challenged, playfully.

The tap at the corner of the lab hissed as Mace washed his hands of the quantum grime. Natural Spa Orange Essence filled the room making Litmus’s eyes water and ears itch.

“No,” he replied plainly, crossing back to his desk. “But if you are very very lucky, you will get used to it.”

“They hate us, don’t they?” Litmus poked his pile of junk tentatively, his ears almost folding back in concern.

“It’s a frustrating thing, living down here.” Mace looked at the wall sadly and wondered if it would ever fall. “Not everyone behaves as they should but you must never blame them.”

They both startled at the sharp rapping.

“Go and see what’s at the door,” said Mace.

Litmus ducked under Mace’s watchful eyes as he scampered toward the front door. He slid it open a crack, hiding behind its shadow until he was sure that the corridor outside was empty of people. There was a blue crate making a nuisance of itself in the corridor. With nowhere left for it, Litmus dragged the heavy object inside the foyer and deposited it in the centre of the floor. A moment later it purred. Curious, Litmus pried off the lid and jumped back as a Persian cat dashed over his shoes.

The creature stopped in short of leaving the room, twirling with an air of superiority to eye Litmus with golden orbs.

“Run. Hide…” He instructed the feline, waving it away before Mace detected it.

Neither of them would name the cat as Mace never agreed to keep it on the grounds that it was the most useless object you’ve ever collected. Still, after five years it could be found napping on the experiment table with one eye open, keeping watch over its pair of reluctant owners.