When I come to, I'm laying on something cool and smooth. Leather, I realize first. The second word that comes to me is "couch." My eyes reach the ceiling, which is smooth and continuous and layered in silent, white light. The room smells sterile, like its recently been painted with antiseptic.
I take in the new sights and smells like breathing oxygen for the first time.
I don't bother lifting my head; instead, I turn it and absently inspect the rest of the room. An office, of some sort, I think. The plaque on the desk says Vice-Director. I can't read the name from here but the organization is clear and familiar to me.
Async.
James said he worked for them. I wonder how he came to be a part of all this and where he might be now.
I hope that the dog is okay.
Someone has laid a blanket over me and finally I sit up a bit and wrap it around my shoulders. I'm not home. I'm not outside. In fact, I don't have the slightest idea where I've ended up. But I've escaped hell. That's all that matters to me.
My head turns at the sound of an opening door. A tall man walks in, dressed nicely, almost formally, and carrying a tray. He sits in a chair across from me, considers me for a moment, then puts the tray down between us.
It's tea and a few sandwiches.
We look at each other for a moment.
"I hope you don't mind roast beef."
His voice is different than I was expecting. From the look of his face, it would be sharp and cutting. Instead, it's just tired. Weary.
I say nothing.
"We don't really have a kitchen here, just laboratories. They don't make the best food."
I eye the roast beef sandwiches with open suspicion.
"That's not where they came from," he adds quickly. "An employee of ours donated his lunch."
This makes me look up. "James?"
For some reason, hearing me speak seems to bring the man immense relief. "No, no. Not him. I'm afraid James is still missing." My head must hang a little. He takes on a lighter tone. "But he's a smart man. He understands the Complex better than any of us, to be frank."
The Complex. So that's what they call it. It sounds about right. Huge and confusing and daunting.
"You're... Cassandra Atkinson." It's a statement, not a question, so I don't answer. I just take a roast beef sandwich. "My name is Ivan Beck."
He says this proudly as if it's something very important I should know.
"I'm the Vice-Director here at Async Research. I oversee a lot of what goes on here, and what goes on, well, in there."
That catches my attention just slightly. So I pour myself a cup of tea. It smells warm and earthy. I take a sip and let it burn down my throat. It feels good. It feels like something.
"... And I want to know, Cassandra, what a pretty young girl like yourself is doing in a place like this? How'd you get in there?"
I take another sip and cough a little on it. "Why is my chest so sore?"
Beck frowns. "You underwent a medical examination while you were unconscious. It's probably a side effect."
I'm irritated that I was examined without my consent but I don't feel like arguing that point. "Is there anything wrong with me?"
"Not that we could tell. You came out pretty much unharmed physically. You're probably still in shock but that will fade with time. Why?" He leans forward. "Do you think there's something wrong with you?"
"No."
He looks at me for a long time, then sits back again. "Good. Now, why don't you tell me a little bit about what happened?"
I ignore his question. "Where am I? What is this place?"
"I can't say anything except that you're California."
"Where in California?"
"You lived in Solano County?"
"Yes."
"Well, you're not there anymore." He clears his throat. "You're closer to San Francisco."
Now I'm confused. "I must have walked really far in there." And for a long time... "What day is it?"
"May 8th."
I put down the sandwich. "What? What year?"
Beck takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose, looking infinitely tired. "1990."
"It's been six months? I've been gone six months?" Shock and confusion continues to expand inside of me. "I only fell in there a... a day ago. Maybe two at the most." Suddenly the sandwich I'd just taken a bite of tastes like cardboard. The lights here are too bright and the tea starts to smell sickeningly of mildew. My eyes start to water. "What is that place? And what on earth are you all doing in it?"
Beck hesitates. "The Complex is an... anomaly. Found by accident but with incredible potential. We're well aware it presents its... dangers but I think there's a good chance it could be utilized-"
"I don't want a sales pitch." I stare at him, aghast. "That's what this is, isn't? A business venture?"
"Miss Atkinson, it very well could be a solution to many of the worlds problems."
"How did I get mixed up in this? How did I fall in?"
"I don't... We're not sure how you all-"
I cut him off. "'You all'? You mean, there's been others?"
Beck closes his eyes. "I don't have time for this. There are a number of very important people here as we speak that need attending to."
My heart is beating quickly. "Who else came out of there?"
For the first time, Ivan Beck looks disconcerted. "There was a... cadaver."
"You mean a corpse. Who was it, could you tell?"
"It was... a young man."
I'm becoming desperate. "Did you find out who it was, could you identify him?"
"I.. That's no business of yours."
I laugh. Hysterically. Insanely. "Yes, yes, it is. This whole thing because MY brother went missing and I was looking for him and while I was in there I found his... his..." I break off, trying to contain my anger, fear, and disgust. I don't want this man to see it.
"Is this what you're talking about?" He reaches into his pocket. He produces my brother's phone.
I stare. Then reach for it. He lets me take it from his hands.
"We found it. On the floor outside the observation room. The... entity had fled." He peers at me over his glasses. As if searching my face for something. "Cassandra, your brother isn't dead."
I look up quickly. "What?" My fist tightens around the phone in my hand. "But... but this is his. He was in there. He was lost in there just like me." My face is wet once more.
Beck shakes his head. "It turns out you are part of an incredibly resourceful - or maybe just unequivocally lucky - family. Because, just like you," he leans forward and looks me very carefully in the eyes, "he made it out."
I can barely breathe. My words come tumbling out of me, followed by soul-deep sobs of relief. "Where is he? I want to see him."
Beck seems to be stirred very little by my display of emotion. I guess in a world like his - a world of monsters and terrifying mysteries - feeling too much could be a danger. It's something I understand all too well now.
"He will be brought here shortly. We have much to discuss-"
An alarm begins to whine in the distance. For a moment, all I can hear in it is the grating, mechanical roar of the entity. I fight the urge to dive over the back of the couch into hiding.
Beck seems almost as disturbed, though I doubt it's for the same reason as me. He stands up quickly. "Excuse me."
I stand up too. "What about my brother? Am I going to-"
He waves me away, already opening the door in a hurry. "I'll sort that out on my way. Something important has come up."
I hear him muttering to himself as the door closes. I hesitate, on the verge between sitting back down and trying the door. Eventually, I do take the handful of steps and try the handle.
It's locked. The room all of a sudden seems a lot smaller, and a lot more empty of human life.
I fight back my panic and sit back down on the couch, wrapping the blanket tightly around myself and trying to pretend I'm at home, in our living room, instead of here in some kind of underground research facility.
I remind myself that Jeremy is alive and that they can't keep us here forever. That calms me a bit.
So I sit very still, staring at the clock and watching the minutes tick by. I'm not in a hurry to lose track of time the way I lost six months of my life in the Complex. But still, the time doesn't feel quite real as it shifts from minutes to hours. Every once and a while, I hear something. Heated arguments rise and fall as they pass my door. Hushed whispers. Groups of employees, I think, gossip amongst themselves.
Something has happened here today, something more than ushering me out of the Complex. I wasn't the first person to arrive the way I did. They'd found others, dead and alive. This was something newer.
Part of me wants nothing to do with them and the dimension they've somehow tapped into. I've had far more than my fill of it. But something about it still piques my curiosity...
More footsteps in the hall. More than one person but not too many. They pause outside my door. Then, it opens.
It takes only a glimpse of Jeremy's face and I'm on my feet, immediately gathering him into my arms. He hugs me back, something he'd never have done before if he could help it, and his arms are so tight I can barely breathe, which is something I'm not doing anyway. I'm crying and coughing and trying to talk to him all at the same time.
The door has been closed after him. It's just the two of us in the room so I feel no obligation to let go of him. But eventually, he pulls back and looks up into my face.
He's still shorter than me, though not by a lot, and still thirteen, but he looks so much older. His eyes are wide and his mouth is open, forming different words but never speaking them.
Finally, he shakes his head.
"How did you find me?"
I shiver. His voice is hoarse. It scares me. I wonder if he's sick. "I got your call. I was going to alert the police and we were going to find you when I... fell."
His face is pale but coloured with different emotions. "Noclipped, yeah. But- what call? I never called you. I... dropped," he stumbles over that word and we both know why, "my phone while I was in there. In the Back Rooms. I never called anyone."
I take his phone out of my pocket, confused now on so many levels. "It's back now but- I don't understand. I know you called me."
"There's a lot of things I don't understand right now." He takes the phone from me, with a bit of caution, which I don't blame him for in the slightest. Both of us have varying ideas of where its been. He turns it over in his hands. "Do you... think it still works?"
This conversation feels a thousand miles away from where it should be but I treasure its normalness. I fall back onto the couch. He follows me. "I don't know. You could try calling someone."
"I guess." He absently types in a number.
I watch him, studying his face, looking for marks of what he's been through. "What is it you called that place?"
He doesn't look up from the phone. "The Back Rooms."
I mouth the words, trying to see how they fit with the picture of the place in my head. "Ivan Beck called it the Complex."
An angry shadow crosses Jeremy's face. "You talked to Beck?"
"Yeah. Didn't you?"
"A bit." He coughs. "He didn't have a lot of patience for me, I think."
"Then who have you been talking to these last- How many days have you been here?"
He fidgets with the phone. "Three, I think. I've mainly been talking to Marv-" He sits up. "Cassie?"
I look over. "Hmm?"
"You picked up."
My skin prickles. "What do you mean?"
His eyes are wide. "The phone. I called you to see if it was working- You picked up."
"What?!"
He leans over the phone. "Cassandra Atkinson, is that you?"
Incredibly, impossibly, my voice comes through the speakers. "Jeremy?"
He looks at me. I'm sure his shocked expression mirrors my own. "Cassie," he says, breathless. It's disbelief that I hear in his voice this time, from this end of the mic.
"Oh my gosh."
My voice over the phone issues out a whole bunch of words at once. I barely hear them. "Jeremy. Oh my gosh, Jeremy, stay where you are- I mean, where are you? Are you okay? I'm coming okay. Jeremey, stay on the line."
I shrink back from the phone. "This doesn't make sense. This is impossible."
Jeremy covers the microphone. "Cassie... Where's your phone?"
I shake my head. "I dropped it, a long time ago, in the-" I break off. My mouth refuses to move.
Jeremy is paler than ever. "You don't think..."
"Jeremy, we're looking for you okay? We're going to find you, just don't do anything dumb. Please tell me where you are."
I'm staring into space. This can't be happening. This is impossible. I know it is. "You're going to tell me... You're going to tell me I'll see you soon. That I'm close."
And, for the second time, I hear those words. "Soon, Cassie. You're close."
He looks to me for confirmation. I nod. Just once.
He hangs up the phone.
We sit in silence.
Footsteps start approaching.
I turn to him. "Do you think they know?"
"I think they know... next to nothing." His voice is shaking. I've never heard him like this before. Never. When he turns to look at me, his eyes are broken and full of tears. "Cassie, they have no idea what they're doing in there. And wh- what's worse is that they know it. And they keep going back."
I look away. Straight at the plaque on Ivan Beck's wall behind his desk. Studying the faces of his children in the picture in the corner. I wonder if he fears for them. If anyone - good or bad, young or old - can join the Back Rooms club at any time for no reason at all... I don't know how he lives with it.
I don't know how I'm going to live with it.
As it turns out, Ivan Beck himself arrives to make that decision for me.
Both Jeremy and I just stare at him as he enters the room, carefully closes the door behind him, and sits down across from us. He looks even more tired than earlier. And angrier. He looks angry.
Suddenly, I want to start the conversation.
"When are we going home?" I'm done with this place. I need to leave, and see the sun again. I need to figure out what I'm going to do with myself and my brother now that things will never be the same.
Beck clears his throat. "There's been a... development... with the complex."
"I don't care. We're going home and your people are going to take us there." I feel my lungs growing heavy. I need to get out of here. "When are we leaving?"
Beck takes a deep breath, maybe for patience. Then he looks us both in the face, one at a time. Then, he speaks slowly, choosing his words carefully. "You two... have had a very unique experience. We don't know what will arise from it. We don't know what you could teach us. If you would only stay a little longer-"
Jeremy interrupts him. "Do our parents know where we are?"
Beck looks surprised. "So. Your little brother has decided to open his mouth finally. Wonderful."
The way he says it is genuine. That doesn't stop it from being disgusting to me, whatever it is he means. "He asked you a question."
Beck sits back, looking vaguely amused. "Well, aren't you two an attack team all of a sudden?" He waits for us to laugh but we don't. "No, they don't know where you are. Or that you're alive." He gives us a moment for that to sink in. He probably expects some kind of reaction but I just feel numb. Overload, I think. I have nothing to say. Neither does Jeremy.
So Beck takes our silence as an invitation for him to keep talking and pushes a piece of paper across the table to us. The lines of fine print blur on the page but the title is clear.
Jeremy frowns. "What is it?"
I shake my head. "It's a Non-Disclosure Agreement."
"I need you both to sign it. It's a matter of federal importance and national security." He leans forward. "You have to understand. All that you've seen and heard has to stay inside of this facility the moment you leave, save for between signatories."
Ultimately, that's fine with me. I don't want to talk about this. I can't really, not yet. But everything about it still sickens me. And yet I pick up the pen. I can see in Beck's face that he's hungry for me to put ink on that page. In fact, he's desperate.
I pause a moment. "So, we sign it. You have our silence. And we have... What? What could you promise us that could possibly fix any of this?"
He frowns, but he plays along. "We'll take you both home. Pay for medical and psychological care resulting from your experience."
I nod. "And?"
He sighs. "What more could we possibly do?"
I look at Jeremy. This is his trauma too. He's signing himself into silence just as much as I am. He shifts in his seat and I can see him thinking, the wheels turning. I'd almost accuse his intellect of being the reason he made it out of the Backrooms alive, except I know that's not the way it works. The only way anyone could get out is pure luck. Or providence. That's something I add to my mental list of things I'll need to reconsider before life will ever be normal again.
Jeremy seems to make up his mind. "Replace our phones." He glances at me. "Dad will flip when he finds out we lost yours."
That makes me laugh. I swear even Ivan Beck smiles a little too as he nods his head. "Consider it done."
I take the pen to the page. Let it hover so close that a little ink bleeds out into the paper. At the last second, I look the older gentleman right in the face, just to make sure he hears every word. "Async got us out of there. For that, I'm grateful. But - and I could be wrong but - I can't help but feel you had something to do with us ending up there in the first place."
His face is unreadable. He just looks at me with dark eyes.
"If you can do anything to stop that from happening to anyone else... Please. I'm begging you." I take a deep breath. "Do it."
Jeremy puts a hand on my shoulder. "Listen to your people, Mr. Beck. The ones who've come back from the brink. You know who they are."
Beck delivers a quick, almost robotic, response. "Thank you for your feedback."
It feels like our words have done nothing. But there's nothing else to be said.
So I sign my name at the bottom of Async's NDA, alongside Jeremy's. Beck follows it up with a signature of his own.
And then, I'm back to listening to the monotonous whine of a dial tone, preparing myself for a long, tearful conversation with my parents. I don't know yet what I'm going to tell them.
After that, I have a few hours before we board a plane for Solano County.
I think I'll call my therapist. It's been a few weeks.